Wireless Network Hacking
This chapter includes questions from the following topics:
• Identify wireless network architecture and terminology
• Identify wireless network types and forms of authentication
• Describe WEP and WPA wireless encryption
• Identify wireless hacking methods and tools
• Define Bluetooth hacking methods
I went to high school in the 80s and lived virtually every stereotype from the age you’re picturing in your head right now. I had parachute pants, a Members-Only jacket, listened to big-hair rock music, and thought Eddie Murphy was original (and even funny). It’s hard to imagine, now, how wrong we were about so much of that. Not to mention kids nowadays dress for Halloween like I did for school.
One day I was sitting in Mr. Rockwell’s math class and was listening to two girls talk about their Friday night dates. It wasn’t like I was sitting around a corner eavesdropping or anything like that—I was just sitting at my desk and they were talking loud enough to be overheard. They didn’t seem to care, though, because they were using a crazy fad that started back in the 80s to communicate: speaking gibberish (it’s not as well known, mainly because it’s annoying and startlingly dumb, but it was a fad for a long while). Gibberish consisted of injecting the sound otha-ga between the syllables of a word (for example, fishing would be pronounced fish-otha-ga-ing-otha-ga) so that only another gibberish speaker could understand you. Some of these girls were really quick with it, too, so it did indeed sound like gibberish.
As inane and dumb as this sounds, it was pretty popular when I was in school: for the girls anyway (we dudes were just way too cool for that). The problem with it was, once you knew the setup, their communication wasn’t secret anymore. There they sat, broadcasting information over the air believing it to be secure, when all the while I sat there listening in and understanding everything that was said (not to mention finding out some really juicy information about Brian, Ashley, and an after-game late night around the Burger King parking lot). And the opportunity was abundant: Literally every class had girls speaking gibberish—sometimes right in the middle of a conversation with guys they’d turn to each other and gibber away—and those of us who knew the score had a leg up on information in the school. For a guy like me, information has always, always been valuable.
Wireless networks are much the same today as those gibbering girls from my high school. They’re literally everywhere, and they’re broadcasting information across the air that anyone can pick up. Sure, most of it is gibberish, but if you can crack that code (if you can find the “otha-ga” in the wireless transmission), you sure can find some juicy information of your own. Maybe not as much fun as a friend’s Friday night escapades, but useful to your job as a pen tester.
STUDY TIPS Depending on the pool of test questions the system pulls for your exam, you’ll either grow to love the test you’re taking or hate it with a fiery passion. Questions on wireless are fairly easy and shouldn’t bother you too much, except for the ones that aren’t. Questions on war chalking, for instance, can sometimes be maddeningly obtuse. Others that will drive you bonkers will be on the encoding methods used, channel interference, and things of that nature. The vast majority of the questions, as you can read in this chapter, shouldn’t pose much of a problem for you.
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