Wireless Pentesting Ethical hacking project

Published on 05 Jul 2021. Written by Dineshkumar E

Wireless technology is here and it is going to stay. Knowing the risks and vulnerabilities involved in wireless technology will help you to secure your network. In this ethical hacking project, we are going to examine the wireless network using a wireless penetration test. This project is for an educational purpose to never try to breach other wireless networks in real life.

What is wireless penetration testing?

It is an authorised exploitation method where ethical hackers perform an attack to detect the vulnerabilities in a wireless network and identify the misconfigured access points and weak security protocols.

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SLNOTE
Benefits of Wireless Pentesting

• Detects vulnerabilities and weak access points
• Secures the wireless access path to your internal network
• Prevents unauthorized access of your wireless network to prevent cyber attacks
• Protects the data being exploited by providing greater security
• Checks the security monitoring processes and event response tactics

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Software and Hardware requirements: 

• You need to install Kali Linux in your laptop or you can also run using VM VirtualBox.

• Wireless card (optional) If you are running the Kali in the laptop you can use the laptop's wireless adaptor itself. Or you can use ALFA AWUS036NH which is a powerful one and comes with a built-in antenna. 

Project Implementation

Wireless Penetration testing is divided into two phases -

• Active Phase 
• Passive phase

In Passive phase, the attacker collects the information about the target. This phase involves the following process:

• Surveying the environment
• Studying about the target security responses
• Speaking with legitimate users about security control
• Sniffing the traffic

In the Active Phase, the attacker will interact directly with the victim. By performing the following process:

• Asking user credentials directly by sending phishing mails
• Stimulate certain actions by injecting wireless frames

Steps to perform a wireless penetration test

Following are the steps involved in performing the wireless penetration test:

1. Wireless reconnaissance: Collect the information regarding the WiFi network by sniffing out the premises.

2. Identify the wireless network: Now scan and identify the networks using airodump. Before doing this set the wireless card in “monitor” mode. To decrease the workload set airodump to capture only a specific channel.

3. Vulnerability research: After identifying the WiFi network, the next step is to identify the vulnerabilities on that WiFi network. When a user authenticates the wireless network a pre-shared key is created and transmitted. During this process, a hacker can sniff the key and extract the password. 

4. Exploitation: We are going to use the AirNG tool to perform the exploitation. 

• Taking the initial 4-way handshake when a client reconnects
• Doing an offline dictionary attack to find the password
• Deactivating access to a genuine client

As we are going to capture the 4-way handshake which happens when every client authenticates to connect. We need to de-authenticate the genuine client who is already connected. 

Next is the process of capturing the 4-way handshake and the time taken to do this depends on the distance between the hacker and the access points. After capturing the 4-way handshake it is saved as.cap file. 

Now perform the dictionary attack on the captured key, You can use Aircrack-ng to perform this.

Conclusion

Thus we have performed a wireless penetration test using Airplay-NG. Security is an important thing to consider while deploying a wireless network. Therefore penetration testing is a popular way to determine the security level of a wireless network. 

SLDYK
Kit required to develop Wireless Pentesting Ethical hacking project:

• Burp suite

Technologies you will learn by working on Wireless Pentesting Ethical hacking project:

• Ethical hacking

Any Questions?