How to Hack Wi-Fi: Getting Started with the Aircrack-Ng Suite of Wi-Fi Hacking Tools

How to Hack Wi-Fi: Getting Started with the Aircrack-Ng Suite of Wi-Fi Hacking Tools

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers!

In the first part of my series on Wi-Fi hacking, we discussed the basic terms and technologies associated with Wi-Fi. Now that you have a firm grip on what Wi-Fi is exactly and how it works, we can start diving into more advance topics on how to hack Wi-Fi.

In this article, we'll take a look at the world's best Wi-Fi hacking software, aircrack-ng, which we previously used to bump your annoying neighbor off their own Wi-Fi network. We'll be using aircrack-ng in nearly all of the subsequent hacks, so I think it's wise to start with some basics on what is included and how to use everything.

First of all, aircrack-ng is not a single tool, but rather a suite of tools for manipulating and cracking Wi-Fi networks. Within this suite, there is a tool called aircrack for cracking passwords, but to get to the cracking we need to do several steps using other tools. In addition, aircrack-ng is capable of doing DOS attacks as well rogue access points, caffe latte, evil twin, and many others.

So, let's get started with the aircrack-ng suite!

Quick Note

The ng stands for new generation, as aircrack-ng replaces an older suite called aircrack that is no longer supported.

Step 1: Iwconfig

Before we get started with aircrcak-ng, we need to make certain that BackTrack recognizes your wireless adapter. We can do this within any Linux system by typing:

  • bt > iwconfig

We can see here that BackTrack recognizes my USB wireless card, and it tells me that it's capable of 802.11bgn, that the ESSID is off, that the mode is managed, etc.

Okay, now we're ready to start using aircrack-ng.

Step 2: Airmon-Ng

The first tool we will look at and need in nearly ever WiFi hack is airmon-ng, which converts our wireless card into a promiscuous mode wireless card. Yes, that means that our wireless card will hookup with anyone!

Well, that's almost correct. When our network card is in promiscuous mode, it means that it can see and receive all network traffic. Generally, network cards will only receive packets intended for them (as determined by the MAC address of the NIC), but with airmon-ng, it will receive all wireless traffic intended for us or not.

We can start this tool by typing airmon-ng, the action (start/stop), and then the interface (mon0):

  • bt > airmon-ng start wlan1

Airmon-ng responds with some key information on our wireless adapter including the chipset and driver. Most importantly, note that it has changed the designation for our wireless adapter from wlan1 to mon0.

Step 3: Airodump-Ng

The next tool in the aircrack-ng suite that we will need is airodump-ng, which enables us to capture packets of our specification. It's particularly useful in password cracking.

We activate this tool by typing the airodump-ng command and the renamed monitor interface (mon0):

  • bt >airodump-ng mon0

As we can see in the screenshot above, airodump-ng displays all of the APs (access points) within range with their BSSID (MAC address), their power, the number of beacon frames, the number of data packets, the channel, the speed, the encryption method, the type of cipher used, the authentication method used, and finally, the ESSID.

For our purposes of hacking WiFi, the most important fields will be the BSSID and the channel.

Step 4: Aircrack-Ng

Aircrack-ng is the primary application with the aircrack-ng suite, which is used for password cracking. It's capable of using statistical techniques to crack WEP and dictionary cracks for WPA and WPA2 after capturing the WPA handshake.

Step 5: Aireplay-Ng

Aireplay-ng is another powerful tool in our aircrack-ng arsenal, and it can be used to generate or accelerate traffic on the AP. This can be especially useful in attacks like a deauth attack that bumps everyone off the access point, WEP and WPA2 password attacks, as well as ARP injection and replay attacks.

Aireplay-ng can obtain packets from two sources:

  1. A live stream of packets, or
  2. A pre-captured pcap file

The pcap file is the standard file type associated with packet capture tools like libpcap and winpcap. If you've ever used Wireshark, you've most likely worked with pcap files.

We can see in the screenshot above of the first half of the aireplay-ng help screen, that aireplay can filter by the BSSID of the access point, the MAC address of either source or destination, the minimum and maximum packet length, etc. If we scroll down the help screen, we can see some of the attack options using aireplay-ng:

These include deauth, fake deauth, interactive, arpreplay (necessary for fast WEP cracking), chopchop (a form of statistical technique for WEP packet decrypting without cracking the password), fragment, caffe latte (attacking the client side), and others.

These four tools in the aircrack-ng suite are our Wi-Fi hacking work horses. We'll use each of these in nearly every Wi-Fi hack. Some of our more hack-specific tools include airdecap-ng, airtun-ng, airolib-ng and airbase-ng. Let's take a brief look at each of these.

Step 6: Airdecap-Ng

Airdecap-ng enables us to decrypt wireless traffic once we have cracked the key. In other words, once we have the key on the wireless access point, not only can we use the bandwidth on the access point, but with airdecap-ng we can decrypt everyone's traffic on the AP and watch everything they're doing (the key is used for both access and for encryption).

Step 7: Airtun-Ng

Airtun-ng is a virtual tunnel interface creator. We can use airtun-ng to set up an IDS on the wireless traffic to detect malicious or other traffic on the wireless access point. So, if we're looking to get an alert of a particular type of traffic (see my tutorial on creating a PRISM-like spy tool), we can use airtun-ng to set up a virtual tunnel that connects to an IDS like Snort to send us alerts.

Step 8: Airolib-Ng

Airolib-ng stores or manages ESSID's (the name of the access point) and password lists that will help speed up WPA/WPA2 password cracking.

Step 9: Airbase-Ng

Airbase-ng enables us to turn our laptop and wireless card into an AP. This can be especially useful when doing a rogue access point or evil twin attacks. Basically, airbase-ng allows us to attack the clients, rather than the AP, and encourages the clients to associate with us rather than the real AP.

That's It for Now

These are the primary tools in the aircrack-ng suite that we'll be using as we explore Wi-F hacking. There are other tools, but these are the ones we'll be focusing on.

In our next guide, we'll start our exploration of wireless hacking techniques with creating a evil twin access point, so make sure to keep coming back. If you have any questions, please comment below or start a discussion in the Null Byte forum and we'll try to help you out.

Aerial symbol and Wireless router photos via Shutterstock

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1

Ty so much,
I' following u and hope this guide will make me more haky :-)
Now i'm a lamer and i'd like to know something new and maybe better then only wifi hacking in the future.
Before my wireless card wasn't recognized by backtrack so i bought the adapter u told about and it works fine.
Well, i say u thanks and hope , like before, that u'll teach us more things :-)

Ps.
Sorry for my bad english but i hadn't time to use google translator :-)

2 years ago
1

when i type airmon-ng nothing show to me :/ whats wrong can u tell me pls ? or gimme your email and i send you message ..

2 years ago
1

You may not have wlan interface try downloading drivers compact wireless from google. better to search for version dated 26 june 2010 :)

hope it will work

7 months ago
1

Ma:

Did you check to see whether your wireless card is up and running?

Also, the command requires the start command with the name of the interface.

OTW

2 years ago
1

When I used the command ( airmon-ng start wlan1) the designation for my wireless adapter does not change from wlan1 to mon0 so im unable to proceed from there i do not get that part of thae reading at all

2 years ago
1

Andwele:

When you type iwconfig, what is your wireless adapter?

OTW

2 years ago
1

i am on wlan0 instead of wlan1 but when i use the command (airodump-ng start mon0) i keep getting "airodump-ng --help" for help.

i cannot proceed further than here because of this ...help plz !

2 years ago
1

Andwele:

First, you must put wlan0 in monitor mode.

airmon-ng start wlan0

Then, airodump-ng mon0

OTW

2 years ago
1

Andwele:

Are you using an aircrack-ng compatible wireless adapter?

OTW

2 years ago
2

Will this work on windows 8? And from where can I get the software.. I dont want any virus to sweep into my system...

I know I am talking very naive but this is the first time I am doing anything like this..

Thanks in advance!

2 years ago
2

Annanna:

This software is all on BackTrack. Its a Linux distribution with hacking and security tools. You can get it directly from here.

I have several tutorials on Null Byte on how to install and use it.

Welcome to Null Byte!

OTW

2 years ago - edited 2 years ago
1

Command Airmon-Ng not find me and iwconfig command not act
There Efe origin afflicting thou shalt not work for me why?

2 years ago
1

DKTR:

Welcome to Null Byte!

What error messages are you getting?

OTW

2 years ago
1

I do not get an error message right to you it opens a table with full wifi
This opens a table but there are no where WIFI.

2 years ago
1

DKTR:

iwconfig should list your wifi interfaces. Then you need to put your wifi adapter into monitor mode with airmon-ng. After putting it into monitor mode, you then use airodump-ng to see all the AP's.

OTW

2 years ago
1

It always
iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions
No matter how many times I do it always

2 years ago
1

When running BackTrack in a VM, you must have an external wireless adapter such as a USB wireless adapter. Otherwise, you will need to run BackTrack directly on the hardware to use your built in wifi.

OTW

2 years ago
1

Thanks,,,
Can I Dual Boot Kali Linux And Windows 8.1 To hack wifi password, I am using a laptop core i 3 ???

1 year ago
1

You need to run the tracks directly on your use hardware built in WiFi

How do I do this?

2 years ago
1

DKTR:

I suggest buying an ALFA card for hacking wifi. You will need one to do all my hacks.

You can also install BT as a dual boot system.

OTW

2 years ago
1

I have a wireless card D-Link How do I get ALFA card??
You can also install a dual boot system BT
How do I install BT?

2 years ago
1

DKTR:

The Alfa card is available from nearly all the electronic retailers.

I have a tutorial here on how to install Backtrack.

OTW

2 years ago
1

But I did not understand how I run Backtrack directly on hardware for your use built in WiFi
VM software

2 years ago
1

DKTR:

Did you read the tutorial?

Download BackTrack, burn it to a disk and then install on your hard drive. BackTrack will prompt you to make a dual boot system.

OTW

2 years ago
1

Disc DVD + R that good?
It can burn the Maya Attribute infest?
And I apologize with I load too much of you just did not get the manual ....

2 years ago
1

Airmon-NG is showing zero results. I'm assuming it's possible that one of the running processes air mon warned me about could be interfering. Would spoofing my MAC address have any effect on the dump? I'm also not connected to the Internet, but I really didn't think that would matter. I'm playing with it, but was just curious what your thoughts would be. Thanks otw

2 years ago
1

Yes, took me a little while to get the adapter up and running, so I may have configured something wrong.

AWUS036NH
Bridged the adapter in virtual box
USB is active
And promiscuous mode is set to allow vms

2 years ago
1

It looks exactly like the screenshot from the lesson. Only difference is my tx-power=20 dB.

2 years ago
1

Showing mon0 and wlan0 with the same chipset and driver. Ralink RT2870/3070 rt2800usb - phy0

Also worth noting I'm running Kali on a 64 bit Debian vm

2 years ago
1

Woooow, detached USB, plugged it back in... Problem solved. I should know better than that. Thanks for the quick response and help OTW.

2 years ago
1

Dear master otw

Can you please add me on facebook, so you can give me some quick response, my name is sebastian nielsen with the squirrel picture to the left.

Ps. Im your biggest fan!!!

2 years ago
1

Sebastian:

Welcome to Null Byte! I'm glad you are enjoying my tutorials.

As you can imagine, I need to maintain my anonymity so I can only communicate with you through Null Byte. Sorry.

OTW

2 years ago
1

Dear Master otw

what I thought was that you could make a fake facebook account. where you could get a lot of friends who have questions about your "block" that you could give quick response to. and of course you need to write fake things down about yourself. So you can stay anonymous.

Why becouse i dont like to try the tutorial out and wait for you answer my quistions after some hours.
I hope you understand and might have changed my mind.
Sorry for my bad english xD

2 years ago
1

Sebastian;

I don't see how a Facebook page would get you a faster response. The limiting factor is me.

OTW

2 years ago
1

I would of said time, as you don't seem very limited lol

2 years ago
1

Master OTW

For this tutorial would it be wise for me to disconnect myself from the internet before attempting it?

2 years ago
1

Hey Gumskull, not sure what OTW will say, but I've been successful using a cable LAN connection for my internet connection and then using the aircracking suite on wireless that way you can still read the tutorials, look up things etc.

Hope this helps

2 years ago
1

My problem here is that my router is downstairs and my computer is upstairs and I don't have an ethernet cable long enough to reach upstairs without demolishing the house. Would it still work if I were to use a wireless connection?

2 years ago
1

You don't HAVE to be connected to the lan, you could always just download/ print out the tutorial

2 years ago
1

You make an excellent point there. My mind doesn't work the easy way around. Thank you.

2 years ago
2

hey sebastian i think ur looking for a private tutor.........After reading all these comments ,i'd just like to say THANK U to OTW for your time and patients....hey guys u ever played 100 games of chess at once.......exactly

2 years ago
1

hi can tell me whats happening here thanks

root@kali:~# aireplay-ng --deauth 100 -a 58:#:35:#:50:C8 mon0
19:00:50 Waiting for beacon frame (BSSID: #:98:#:23:#:C8) on channel -1
19:00:50
Couldn't determine current channel for mon0,
you should either force the operation with --ignore-negative-one or apply a kernel patch
Please specify an ESSID (-e).

2 years ago
1

try dropping the - out of your channel switch
Also i Don't know if you HAVE to, but i always specify the ESSID

Try aireplay-ng --help, but mostly i think it's because your using "channel -1" instead of "channel 1"

2 years ago
1

Nice Article, but i am just curious to know that is it really necessary to switch wlan into mon mode ?

Because at one time , i used airodump-ng with mon mode enabled and the other time with mon mode disabled ( I used airodump-ng -c 1 -w "data file name" --bssid 00:16:*:B4:*:* wlan0 )

I couldn't observe any certain difference in the console terminals. Both the processes seemed same to me.

2 years ago
3

Bharat:

If you don't put the wlan into mon mode, you will be limited in what packets you can pick up and send.

OTW

2 years ago
1

Hi OTW,

I have a problem with Aircrack ....my channel is always fixated on -1 even when i try to change it to a specific channel

1 year ago
1

Evil,

At the end of your code use "--ignore-negative-one"
That is what worked for me.

1 year ago - edited 1 year ago
1

You need all these tools and they are all built into Kali.

1 year ago
1

So my wireless adapter (ALFA AWUS036NH) arrived and on the command:iwconfig,it detects my wireless adapter.Then I typed airmon-ng start wlan0 and was assigned to monitor mode mon0,but when I typed in airodump-ng mon0,I do not receive any clients on the network.Any ideas OTW?

Peace.

1 year ago
1

Frank:

Attach some screenshots so we can see what's going on and diagnose the issue.

OTW

1 year ago
1

Hello Sir,

I'm using Kali 2.0 in a Virtual machine. I've followed your tutorials. It's really great. But now I'm facing some problems.

I've attached a screenshot when I'm using this command below:

#airodump-ng wlan0mon

So, what's the problem here??? why I'm not getting any "BSSID", "CH" here???

Thanks
ME

2 months ago
1

Screenshot from iwconfig:

Screenshot from airmon-ng start wlan0:

Screenshot from airodump-ng mon0
Here's the problem,no wireless clients returned.

Thanks for your Help :)
Peace.

1 year ago
1

Hi, I have one question, I have done access point mapping using airodump-ng, so i have collected so many aps, with different encryption some of are open aps. Is there any tools or web services are available for visualization ?

I found this website http://bit.ly/1Nbfgm6 but is there any other sources are available ?

Thanks!

1 year ago
1

Hello Sir,

One question: when i execute airdump, what does the part under the Aap list represent? The one with STATION column? Thank you.

7 months ago
1

Which client? I see about 3-4 macs there and I'm not connected to any network. Clients of which network?

7 months ago
1

Awfully sorry for bothering you this much, but what does the Probe column represent? Sometimes there are up to 10 probes on 1 client

7 months ago
1

Hello!

After entering airmong-ng start wlan0 my wireless adapter won't change to monitor mode (mon0)..also i get a lot more output, for example encryption key, ESSID, access point etc..

So when i try airodump-ng mon0 the output is:

Interface mon0:
ioctl(SIOCGIFINDEX) failed: No such device

I tried some other commands, but nothing worked.

I'm running the Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8191SU 802.11n chipset.

After some research I guess this chipset isn't compatible to aricrack-ng??
Please help me out.. i just want to be sure before buying a new adapter.

Thanks in advance.

6 months ago - edited 6 months ago
2

If you are using Kali 2 , the monitor interface is named wlan0mon. If not, before you execute airmon start wlan, first execute airmon-ng check kill

and then airmon-ng start wlan0, to eliminate any interfering processes that might cause this. -ne py

6 months ago
1

airodump-ng mon0 not showing anything plz help.. searching for solution from 2 days still got nothing to fix this ...

6 months ago
1

Hello, I've been trying to get this to work, but it's not. I'm running Kali Linux 2.0 on a live persistent USB. Below is a screenshot of when I type iwconfig and airmon-ng start wlan0.

Image via imgur.com

I have tried airmon-ng check kill btw.

6 months ago
2

Note that in the error message it references wlan0mon. The new version of aircarck-ng using that designation for the monitor interface. Try running airmon-ng start wlan0mon.

6 months ago
1

I've now tried that, and it doesn't show any errors with the airmon-ng start wlan0mon. But when I try airodump-ng mon0, or anything other than airodump-ng wlan0, it says that device is not found.

However when I try airodump-ng wlan0 is show the following:
ioctl(SIOCSIWMODE) failed: Operation not supported

ARP linktype is set to 1 (Ethernet) - expected ARPHRDIEEE80211,
ARPHRD
IEEE80211FULL or ARPHRDIEEE80211PRISM instead. Make
sure RFMON is enabled: run 'airmon-ng start wlan0 <#>'
Sysfs injection support was not found either.

6 months ago
1

"But when I try airodump-ng mon0 or anything other than airodump-ng wlan0, it says that device is not found."

  • airodump-ng wlan0mon
6 months ago
2

"anything other than airodump-ng wlan0" includes wlan0mon. The ones I tried are:

  • wlan0mon
  • wlan0
  • mon0
6 months ago
1

It is getting complicated when it shouldn't. Have you ever packet injected or put that card into monitor mode?

This would help some if you could take the interfaces down and up and set modes manually. I am going to sleep if they have not helped you I will look at this again in few hours.

6 months ago
1

I have never packet injected or put this card into monitor mode. This is my first time ever trying aircrack-ng.

As for taking the interfaces down and up and setting them manually, I'm not sure what you mean. I've never heard about that before. But just take your time, or tell me if this is getting too annoying to help with.

Could my chipset have something to do with it? I think it's BCM43142. This is what I get when lspci -nn | grep Network:

07:00.0 Network controller 0280: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n 14e4:4365 (rev 01)

6 months ago
1

Well broadcom is not the best chipset to start with. I am really sick ATM so Im having a hard time visualizing this issue. Pretty sure if you can not start a monitor interface then the card is not gonna work. I maybe wrong tho...

6 months ago
1

If you are running persistent then reboot the machine type : init 6 <-- not reboot
When the machine comes back up try again w/o killing all the processes. Then let us know if that helped.

This card is compatible with aircrack-ng and packet injection yes?

6 months ago - edited 6 months ago
1

Sadly that did not help. I don't know if it's compatible with aircrack-ng and packet injection. Where do I check that? Sorry, I have only been working with Linux for a few weeks, so I'm still a newbie.

6 months ago

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