Cracking WEP and WPA2

Disclaimer: By performing this lab, you agree that you will not use these skills in an unethical manner. I give you permission to gain access to the wireless network I created for this lab, but I do not give you permission to access any other wireless network using the techniques you will learn in this lab.

Overview

In this lab you will hack into two wireless networks, one protected by WEP and another protected by WPA2. The lab will teach you how trivial it is to crack WEP and WPA2 with a weak password.

I have set up two wireless networks, “ECEn526-WEP” and “ECEn526-WPA2” in the Embedded Lab (EB 438). Each of these networks has a computer attach to it. Your job is to gain access to the network, SSH into the computer, and retrieve the secret off of the computer. There is two secrets in total, one for each network. You will then upload the secrets to Learning Suite. Since the point of the lab is to learn about WiFi security and not hacking, I will give you the username and password of the computer attached to the network.

Here are the steps of the lab:

Gain access to the network. You are on your own for this one. There are plenty of tutorials online for how to do this for WEP and WPA. Good luck!
SSH into the computer attached to the network. Here is the information for the computer attached to the network:
- Network Name: ECEn526-WEP
  - IP Address: 192.168.0.5
  - Username: student
  - Password: student
- Network Name: ECEn526-WPA2
  - IP Address: 192.168.0.2
  - Username: student
  - Password: student
Find the file “secret.txt” in the home directory and view its contents.
Repeat steps 1-3 for the second wireless network. Upload the two secrets to Learning Suite.

Objectives

Gain experience with WiFi security

Resources

Aircrack-ng has a good tutorials on how to crack WEP and WPA2. You can download them here.
To perform some of the attacks, you need to be able to capture packets and inject frames. The ability to capture and inject depends on your computers WiFi adapter firmware. If your wireless chipset does not support these capabilities, you can borrow a USB WiFi adapter from me.
This lab should only take around 45 minutes to complete. If the lab takes longer than that, there is a chance you are doing something wrong. If you are stuck, ask for help.