CRACKING WPA/WPA2 – PSK ENCRYPTION (How To Hack Wi-fi Password)

About a month ago, to my embarrassment, I learned that my Wi-Fi password was so weak that even my 10 year old neighbour could crack it…
No, not really.

• A little Disclaimer – The contents of this post are solely for ethical and educational purposes. You may not use it for unethical purposes. The Author or the Website is not responsible for any damage to yourself, your network, or the computers in you network, should something go wrong. (Basically guys, be careful where you use this and please don’t do anything stupid.)

We’re going to start with a little introduction to Kali Linux, because that is the OS I prefer, is the easiest for this task and comes with all the tools we need. “Kali” is a Linux distribution and is the successor to the much acclaimed Backtrack, which many of you reading this article will probably know of. Now, there are many ways of installing and using Kali, if anyone needs any help, leave in the comments, or Click on This Link How To Install Kali Linux

In this tutorial, I’m going to hack into a Wi-Fi hotspot that I just set up, named – Anonymus.
Now, given that we have Kail Linux, open up a terminal window, type in “ifconfig “. This is going to list all the networking interfaces connected to your device.

Here, we only need (wlan0) which is our Wi-Fi card, so we can disable the others by doing “ifconfig <name of the interface> down”.
(“lo” does no matter)…

Now, we type “airmon-ng start wlan0”

(airmon-ng is just a tool for monitoring air traffic, “start” basically starts the tool, and “wlan0” specifies the interface we are using for monitoring)
It’ll probably show “some processes that could cause trouble”, we’ll simply kill those processes by entering “kill <process ID>”.

Now if we do “ifconfig”, it should show us the newly made monitoring interface “mon0”.

Then, put in, “airodump-ng mon0”.
In the screenshot below, the highlighted bssid is our target (and it is my own), named “Anonymus”, the channel is 13 as we can see under the “CH” column.

For our next step we type in, “airodump-ng –c <channel> -w <name> –bssid <bssid> mon0”.

Let me explain a few things here, “airodump-ng” is a tool for capturing Wi-Fi packets, “<channel>” means the channel your target is running on, “-w” basically writes a file by the name that succeeds it in “<name>”, (I did “handshake” just for the convenience of it) bssid is a string of numbers specific to a hotspot.

Now, open up a new terminal and type in “aireply-ng -0 0 –a <bssid> mon0”, this command send a deauthentication signal (usually called a deauth packet) to all the devices connected to that hotspot. Then after a few seconds we stop it by “Ctrl+C”. Now, as we can see, the other terminal shows that the WPA Handshake was successfully captured.

We can close both windows at this point, and open a new one. Type “ls”; that should list the files in the current directory. We can clearly see that the files from the above operation are present. But we only need the file ending with “-01.cap”.

Then we do, “aircrack-ng –w <full location of the wordlist> <the file name>”.

You may be asking what wordlist? What is that sh*t?
A Wordlist is a file containing thousands of known and possible passwords, which you can download from the internet (“specifying from the internet” – We ain’t dumb, boy! :P). The one I used can be found here. The list contains 982,963,904 words exactly all optimized for WPA/WPA2. Would also just like to point out that this is not my work, I got it from forums.hak5.org. It was a guy who compiled a whole load of useful lists, including his own to come up with 2 lists (one is 11gb and one is 2gb) I will be seeding this torrent indefinitely since it is shareware and awesome!

It will then start searching for matching keys in the word list. Now the time that this will take is solely dependent on the strength of the password. The stronger the password the more time will it take. For very strong passwords, check this out. For tips on creating your own strong password – Top 10 Tips to Create a Strong Password
After completion it looks something like the screenshot below. In it, you can see that it tested 45688 keys and my key was the 45689th. I purposely put futurama because frankly, futurama is awesome! Also it is a very weak password (People reading this, if your password is “futurama”, you’re cool! The Hell? Change it right now!)

Now that we know the password, lets test it…

Annnnd… Voila! it works!

Knowing this you will be…

But beware, don’t use it on a Lannister… (Because a Lannister always pays his debts :P)
For those of you who didn’t understand that reference, #GameOfThrones!

How to Improve Your Wi-Fi Signal Strength : TOP 10 TIPS

1)Use Efficient routers

The newest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac, is three times faster than the previous one, 802.11n. Each 802.11ac antenna can move up to 1,300 megabits of data per second (vs. a max of roughly 450 megabits for n). The easiest and fastest way to get more performance out of your Wi-Fi network is to buy a new 802.11ac router.

 2) Find the right spot

Make sure you put the router in the optimal place. A router sends out signals in all directions, so putting it in a corner of your house results in the significant wastage of signal. For the fastest, most reliable connection, put your router in an open space, as centrally located and as high off the floor as you can.Regardless of where you put your router, the signal will be strongest in the room it’s in. So ideally, you can put it in a spot that’s relatively near the center of your house and a room in which you actually use Wi-Fi-connected devices.

Netgear Nighthawk – 802.11ac router

3) Keep Your Rooter in an Open place

Because the router’s signal can be absorbed by many materials, make sure you place it out in the open as much as possible. Radio waves travel best through open air .If you can see the router from far away, and from many different angles, you’re using it efficiently.

 4) Keep it a bit away from other electronic items  

All sorts of electronic devices can interfere with your Wi-Fi signal: microwaves, TVs, cordless phones etc. i.e. anything that generates an electromagnetic signal or has a motor can cause interference with the signal. This is why keeping it between home entertainment components, beneath your TV, is not a good idea.

 5) Measure your signal strength

There are some Mobile Apps that help you to measure the strength of your Wi-Fi signal at different spots at your house. Apps like Cloudcheck or Amped Wireless’s Wi-Fi Analytics Tool let you walk through your home and identify dead spots, so you can figure out the best places to put your Wi-Fi devices.

Amped Wireless’s Wi-Fi Analytics Tool

 6) Place the antenna vertically up

 The router’s signal spreads out in the direction perpendicular to that of the antennas. In other words, vertically-oriented antennas will broadcast the signal horizontally, covering more of your house. (On the other hand, if you were more concerned about broadcasting the signal to multiple floors, but a smaller area of each one, you could turn the antennas horizontally.)

7) Use both bands.

Many routers have radios that operate on two frequencies, nearly 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (each channel works on a specific frequency near to that). So you can have two separate networks running at the same time, one for devices that access WiFi at the lower frequency and another for those that connect at 5 GHz. The higher band is less crowded and better for high-bandwidth uses like streaming videos.

8) Check to see if your Internet Service Provider is the problem (If your internet is too slow)

A simple way of confirming that your router is the problem and not your actual internet provider is by running a speed test under two conditions: Over the Wi-Fi and with your computer plugged directly into the router via an Ethernet cord.
If they’re both slow, then talking to your ISP or upgrading your plan might help. If the Wi-Fi speed test is much slower, then your router itself is likely the problem.

Wifi Speed Test in speedtest.net

9) Software Tweaks (Additional Tricks)

In some cases, there are some software tweaks you can do to improve your Wi-Fi network.
To configure the software, you usually need to enter a specific IP address in your web browser (look on the bottom of the router or just search for your router’s brand name to figure out what that is). Once you’re in the settings, there are two useful things you can try.
One is changing the channel that the router operates on. This is less of an issue for newer routers, but older ones can often cause interference with each other (especially in crowded urban areas with lots of networks), and changing the frequency channel is a way to solve it. These older routers operate at 14 different frequencies, numbered 1 through 14 and channels 1, 6, and 11 are generally best, because they overlap the least with other channels, causing less interference. The default one is usually channel 6, and if you’re having signal problems, try each of them.
Routers that operate in the 5 GHz range (802.11a, n, and ac) broadcast across 23 channels and are less prone to interference, so there’s less need to operate with the channel settings.Another option is upgrading the router’s software (firmware). This won’t be possible for all routers, but for some older ones, manufacturers put out free firmware upgrades from time to time, and these can improve performance. Search for your router model to see if there’s one out there for you.

10) Upgrading the router

If all the above steps ain’t improving the network performance of your Wi-Fi, then you might try upgrading your current router with a more powerful antenna, though only some routers will let you do this. Finally, to extend your router’s range, you can buy a repeater, a device that picks up your current network and broadcasts it again. It won’t increase your total bandwidth at all, but will spread your network more widely.

How To Increase Wi-Fi Signal Strength on Laptop: 7 Killer Tricks

Thanks to the laptops which come with inbuilt WiFi adaptor which lets us to connect Wi-Fi networks without adding any special hardware like PCs. Every laptop have this feature inbuilt. If your laptop is not showing you the option to connect available Wi-Fi hotspots, check for the obvious steps. If you find WiFi option missing, then you might not have installed WiFi driver to your laptop. Install it from your laptop’s CD now.

Laptop’s Wi-Fi is stronger than smartphone’s WiFi radio. So, you will get better Wi-Fi signal and speed on Laptop. However, if the Wi-Fi network is really very weak and even your laptop is not able to use the WiFi network efficiently, I recommend you to go near to the WiFi network. If you’re at the best place, and still not getting good results then implement these provided tricks. These tricks will surely boost your WiFi Signal on Laptop.

1. Upgrade Your WiFi Router

Recent laptops are using 802.11g or 802.11n Wi-Fi circuitry to efficiently utilize WiFi networks. If your router is an 802.11b device, upgrade it so that it can match the speed of your laptop.

2. Repeat Wi-Fi Signal

To add more strength to your Wi-Fi signal, use repeater (also called wireless amplifier or range expander. It picks up Wi-Fi signals from routers and then retransmits it. Place your Wi-Fi repeater somewhere near the edge of existing signal to make best use of the device. It will then rebroadcast the signal, covering other areas for the connection.

3. Replace Standard Router Antenna with Omnidirectional one

The advantage of Omni antenna is to provide a signal in all direction. The directional signal allows you to target the location where you want to the signal.

4. Install External Wi-Fi Adaptor

Laptops adapters are good but external WiFi adapters are great. If your laptop is old and so you’re not getting better WiFi signal, consider disabling built-in Wi-Fi circuit and antenna and installing an external Wi-Fi adaptor. External Wi-Fi Adapters have large antenna and they uses up-to-date technologies which can drastically improve WiFi signal for your laptop.

5. Change Your Wireless Channel

Wi-Fi routers broadcast Wi-Fi signals on several channels. If the channel (by which your laptop is currently connected) is providing a lot of interference, change the channel through router or access point’s configuration settings.

6. Reposition Wi-Fi router

If possible, try to place your router at the center location, prefer a place where thick walls or obstructing furniture can’t congest your signal. Also avoid placing your router or access point near to any metal surface, electronics that use signals (like Microwave, remote control doors, etc.). They interfere with signal broadcaster.

7.  Put Transmission Power Highest

Many network adapters support connection by adjusting transmission power. The setting can be adjusted through adapter’s drive interface/program. Put the transmission power maximum (100%) so that you can get strongest possible WiFi signal. However, if your laptop is on power saving mode, it will automatically shift the settings back.

8. Disable Network Hogs

Use task manager of any other program to check which apps are running in background and using network. Disable unused applications out of it so that your network speed and laptop’s performance, both can be boost.

9. Keep on checking for firmware updates

Both Wi-Fi router and adapter have firmware that they use to establish connection and offer WiFi. Check if an update is available for your Wi-Fi router or adapter. If it’s available, download it and update your drivers because new updates usually fix problems and provide fixes and solve many connectivity solution. Many times it boost signals also. You can check our article on “How to keep all your windows software update automatically” if you want to stay away from this headache.

10. Use DD-WRT

DD-WRT is an open-source software for routers which is known to ramp up router performance and extend the feature set beyond what typically comes with most routers. It is powerful but not recommended solution because firstly, not all routers support it (however, the number of routers that are supported keeps growing). Also, it can invalidate your router’s warranty and many manufacturers will not help you troubleshoot router issues once you have DD-WRT on them.