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FBI Teaches Lesson In How To Break Into Wi-Fi Networks: Page 4 of 8

About half a dozen different software tools were then used by the FBI team, and they are listed—along with their download links—at the end of the article. Thankfully, the Auditor's Security Collection, which we reviewed last year, is a live CD that has all of these tools already installed. Even the FBI likes this distribution.

If a hacker is lucky enough to find an extremely busy wireless network, passive sniffing should provide enough good packets to allow the WEP key to be recovered. In most cases, however, an active attack or series of attacks are needed to jump start the process and produce more packets. Note that active attacks generate wireless traffic that can itself be detected and possibly alert the target of the attack.

The FBI team used the deauth feature of void11 to repeatedly disassociate the laptop from the access point. Desired additional traffic was then generated as Windows XP tried to re-associate back to the AP. Note that this is not a particularly stealthy attack, as the laptop user will notice a series of "Wireless Network unavailable" notifications in the taskbar of their desktop screen.

Another attack method the FBI team used is a replay attack. The basic premise of this attack is to capture at least one packet traveling from the victim laptop to victim access point. This packet can then be replayed into the network, causing the target AP to respond and provide more traffic to capture.

Aireplay (also part of Aircrack) can perform a replay attack based on captured ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) packets, which are broadcast at regular intervals in wired and wireless networks and are easy to spot. Aireplay automatically scans a captured pcap file, pulls out the suspected ARP requests, and replays them to the access point.

After about three minutes of capturing and cracking, the FBI team found the correct WEP key, and displayed it on a projected notebook screen. Agent Bickers, still speaking to the audience, turned around, looked at the screen and was surprised, "Usually it takes five to ten minutes."