W Lifehacker How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WEP Password with BackTrack 1 ds (a You aready know that f you want to lock down your WiFi network, you should opt for WPA era encryption because WEP sett is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take alook. a Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a WiFi network with WEP security turned on. But first. aword: Knowledge is power, but power doesnt mean you should be ajerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock (httpfifehacker. com/399735/how-to-pick-2-lock-with-2-bump-key) doesnt make you a thief, Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intelectual exercise Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Googl t. This aint what you'd call ‘news." But what is surprising is that someone lke me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap W -Fi adapter. Here's how it goes. What You'll Need Unless youre a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you dontt have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here's what yout need: = A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement, Youtl need a wireless adapter that's capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood securty expert, | purchased an Alfa AWUSOSONH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. Update: Don't do what | did. Get the Alfa AWUSO36H, not the USOSONH, instead. The ‘quy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even seling his router of choice), There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there. = A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of securtty testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn tt, or load it up in ‘VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didnt work as well as 8T3, Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.) = A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using tt, connecting and disconnecting their devices from i. The more use itgets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success. = Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and watting around for your WiFi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be alte patient. Crack That WEP To crack WEP, youll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack's buit-in command line, It's right, there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands, First run the following to get a ist of your network interfaces: airmon-ng The only one ive got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write t down, From here on in, substitute tt in everywhere a command includes (interface). Now, run the following four commands, See the output that | got for them in the screenshot below. airmon-ng stop (interf ifconfig (interface) down macchanger —-mac 00:11:22: airmon-ng start (interface) 44:55 (interface) ene E] that: tte V2, Sa 00:05) If you dont get the same resutts from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won't work with this particular crack. If you do, youve successfully “faked! anew MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.Now t's time to pick your network. Run: airodump-ng (interface) To see alist of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else ene E] that: tte Ve, Sa 00:06) Like | said, ht Ctrl+C to stop this isting, (| had to do this once or twice to find the network | was looking for.) Once youve got t, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands. Now we're going to watch what's going on with that network you chose and capture that information to afl. Run airodump-ng -c (channe))-w (fle name) ~-bssid (bssid) (interface) Where (channel) is your network's channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard, You can use the Shft+insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (fle name). | chose "yoyo." which is the network's name I'm crackingene E] that: tte V2, sas O07 You'l get output lke what's in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be, Open anew Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command: aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:2: 33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface) Here the ESSID is the access point's SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring "Association successful message wth that smiley face ene eerie 1 By ena O00) You're almost there, Now it's time for aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface) Here were creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After afew minutes, that front window wil start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, | was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here's the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a wak. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the "#Data" column—you want it to go above 10,000, (Pictured below its only at 854.)Depending on the power of your network (mines inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time, Wat unti that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack wont work fit doesnt. In fact. you may need more than 10k. though that seems to be a working threshold for many, Once you've collected enough data t's the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the folowing to crack that data youve collected: aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (fle name-Ol.cap) Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (fle name). You can browse to your Home directory to see t: it's the one with .cap as the extension. Ifyou didnt get enough data, arcrack will fall and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, tt will look ike this: anes raneale eo EI The WEP key appears next to "KEY FOUND." Drop the colons and enter itto log onto the network.Problems Along the Way With this article | set out to prove that cracking WEP is arreletively "easy" process for someone determined and wiling to get the hardware and software going, | stil think that's true, but unlke the guy in the video below. | had several dfficulties along the way. In fact, youll notice that the last screenshot up there doesnt look lke the others—tt's because it's, not mine. Even though the AP which | was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before ft was complete, After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as allve CD anda virtual machine), | stil havent captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key. ‘So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and f you're on. deadine—Murphy's Law almost guarantees it wont work if youre on deadine, To see the video version of these exact instructions, check out this dude's YouTube video. Got any experience with the WEP cracking courtesy of BackTrack? What do you have to say about it? Give tt up in the comments, Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, is ted of typing commands that start with ‘ai. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterwere tag feed to get new instalments in your newsreader. Send an email to Gina Trapani, the author of this post, at [email protected], vain! mtr is Keensed under Crentive Commons Ucense permiting nn-commercial shang with stbuton