Well, if you feel this isn't an appropriate topic go ahead and delete it.
I'm heading back to Rapid City tomorrow. Theres quite a few wi-fi's around my neighborhood but all of them have a password. I've tried all the simple passwords to see if they were lazy or not. But none of them are. I was wondering if they're are any methods or programs that crack into the network to get the password or something.
This would be awesome if anyone could help. Thanks in advance.
I'd like to know more myself for educational purposes. Let's keep this topic "that way" so we can "learn something".
The information so far I have gathered is that there are WEP/WPA crackers around, but they are very difficult to find. The majority is for Unix systems, though. The reason is that Unix has more powerful drivers for wireless cards. Windows drivers usually only support the basic functions while Unix drivers also have additional functions such as interception and collection of traffic.
Also, there is a big difference between WEP and WPA. From what I have found out, the WEP crackers take a few seconds. The WPA crackers can take a few hours to a few days, depending on the traffic. WEP crackers don't seem to require any traffic in order to crack the password. The reason is probably the relatively weak encryption. If I remember right WEP usually has shorter passwords and weak keys so the brute force is pretty much enough to crack it. WPA is different and needs to be cracked by using information packets sent over the network because the encryption keys are too strong to be crack with brute force.
My computer has a build in wi-fi thingy majiger. If I say dual boot a unix system or something would the wi-fi adapter work for that?
You will have to get the proper Unix drivers for the card first. You will probably have to use third-party drivers for that.
My sister-in-law had a macbook with which she could log into password protected networks if she just pressed the connect button over and over. Eventually she would be able to connect. xD
I thought Windows drivers had been deliberately nerfed to prevent the user listening to and reading packages not addressed for your own computer.
WEP crackers are difficult to find =o?
You don't need to brute-force WEP. You only need a relatively small number of packets. I believe one of the first attacks on WEP is the FMS attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluhrer,_Mantin_and_Shamir_attack) which is almost 10 years old. No one should use WEP anymore.
I heard about an attack on WPA which required 2 computers (or perhaps just two seperate network cards) to work. Dunno details of this attack, but WPA is definitely more tedious than WEP. I think that attack require an active connection to succeed. Brute-forcing or using a dictionary attack usually don't work very well since almost all if not all current routers has some kind of anti-hammering features.
Remember that no matter how the security is implemented you can always try your hand at social engineering. You may even get permission to use the internet (which is preferable :P)
*hugs*
Ah, my bad. Now I remember. Yes, WEP requires only a small number of packages, that's why it is so easy to crack.
And yeah, WEP is outdated.
As blizzard said, WEP is one of the easiest forms to crack. You need to get a network sniffer so you can get the packets and eventually bruteforce the password :D
for WEP do what I do: Make a LiveCD for Backtrack4 and go look at a youtube video. I can crack most WEP keys with only 2-5000 packets (average youtube video will generate 10000 packets in a matter of seconds).
this of course means you need to have access to a computer on said network