Sunday, January 6, 2008

Hacking Wifi

Hacking WiFi

The key to network security, is knowing how to bypass it!
Let me start this article off with my opinion about hacking. Hacking has 2 meanings: to compromise technological security, and to tweak or modify something. This article would fall under the first meaning, compromising security. Although, in order to secure technological infrastructures, you have to first know how to infiltrate them. For instance, I would have never secured my network the way I did if I had not known how to compromise it. So enjoy this article and please do not use it for anything illegal/ immoral.
This article gives you a vague network security attack.
Problem: You have a WEP encrypted network at your house, and you are afraid someone will find out your key and you want to protect it. Once in the network people could packet sniff packets and discover valuable information.
Solution: The way to infiltrate a WEP encrypted network is to get a program called AirSnort. This is a great program, although it only works with certain NIC ( Network interface cards). Orionco is a great card that is totally compatible with AirSnort. Once in the network, packet sniffers like Effetech and ZxSniffer can be used to sniff packets and get passwords.
Fix: To fix the WEP problem, get a new wireless switch with WPA2 protection. Set this up, and your done. To further protect your network, you could use a MAC filter. A MAC address is an address tied to the NIC (network interface card). You could filter what MAC addresses connected to your wireless switch, although this takes far more time and is pretty sketchy. To fix the packet sniffing problem follow these 4 easy steps:
1. When logging into your mail server, see if your client (browser IE: Internet explorer, Mozilla, Safari, ect…) supports encrypted log ins, and then check if your Mail server does as well. Make sure they are enabled in the clients preferences
2. To further encrypt e-mails use a program called PGP.
3. When online shopping, make sure the site supports SSL 128bit encryption, so packet sniffers and decrypt this and gain access to your credit card number.
Also, the easiest way to protect against packet sniffing is to go with a wired only network. This means that in order for the hacker to infiltrate the network, they will need to be hard wired in.
That’s it, I hope you have had your questions answered!
- Vas Kaloidis (Orbstra)

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