You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.

Today we’re going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn’t mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn’t make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise

.

Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain’t what you’d call “news.” But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here’s how it goes.

What You’ll Need

Unless you’re a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don’t have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here’s what you’ll need:

• A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You’ll need a wireless adapter that’s capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. Update: Don’t do what I did. Get the Alfa AWUS036H, not the US050NH, instead. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
• A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of security testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn’t work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
• A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
• Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient.

Crack That WEP

To crack WEP, you’ll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack’s built-in command line. It’s right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands.

First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces:

airmon-ng

The only one I’ve got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface).

Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below.


airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

If you don’t get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won’t work with this particular crack. If you do, you’ve successfully “faked” a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.

Now it’s time to pick your network. Run:

airodump-ng (interface)

To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else.

Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you’ve got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.

Now we’re going to watch what’s going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

Where (channel) is your network’s channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose “yoyo,” which is the network’s name I’m cracking.

You’ll get output like what’s in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command:

aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

Here the ESSID is the access point’s SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring “Association successful” message with that smiley face.

You’re almost there. Now it’s time for:

aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Here we’re creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here’s the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the “#Data” column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it’s only at 854.)

Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won’t work if it doesn’t. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many.

Once you’ve collected enough data, it’s the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you’ve collected:

aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it’s the one with .cap as the extension.

If you didn’t get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this:

The WEP key appears next to “KEY FOUND.” Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.

Chit Chat

Chit Chat is an application that can be used directly from your desktop, and it works like the Facebook Chat, without the need of a browser. The good thing is that, it’s free and easy to use! Just install it and log-in with your Facebook details.

The plus and the most attractive feature of this messenger is that you can save your chats and you can find them all in the chat history. You can even directly save the conversations while you’re chatting. This will help you to make your chats memorable :D

Chit Chat has a fast, tabbed-interface for chatting with notifications for new IMs. So you’ll never miss out any of your friends messages.

Do give it a try, and drop your comments below :)

Click HERE to Download Now.

Heya,

In this post, I am going to share a simple solution, yet not known by many.  I had a personal experience of having it with McAfee 2009 Total Protection & Windows Blinds (6.0).

My McAfee went through some unrepairable error for which the only solution was a REINSTALL. Since I had enough of McAfee, i decided to uninstall it and install Kaspersky AntiVirus 2009. However as everyone knows, KAV is a very “rigid” type of an Antivirus. It requires that it is the ONLY Antimalware app. on a particular PC. When I started to install it, it refused & said that “McAfee is there, I can’t install !”, even though i had uninstalled it. I googled for a McAfee REMOVAL TOOL and it saved me :) It can be downloaded from here.

Another alternative is also available, if you don’t want to google removal tools. In my case I came across another application. Windows Blinds and it refused to get removed and showed “”Could not open INSTALL log”.

The Steps required are -

1. First try to clean uninstall it again using windows Installer Clean Up utility, it’s available at Microsoft.
2. Once downloaded and installed, go to “C:\program files\windows installer clean up”, there you will find a file msicuu.exe.
3. Run this and see if windows blinds is listed in the box. If so, select it and click on remove.
4. Restart computer.

However, I don’t know why I did not see Windows Blinds in the dialog Box, so i downloaded this. It’s the authorized tool from Stardock Inc. themselves. After all, The Creator of the Application knows best ;)

By,

Ahmad Shumayal,

Admin.

Recycle :P

This is when I remembered of a software called *Time Stopper*, which claims to run trials forever. But I thought to try doing things myself, what the software is supposed to do :)

So here it goes, Time Stopper makes the trial software believe that it’s in another time and the trial period is still left. So basically what I had to do is, change the system’s date to previous so that the software will run thinking that it’s being run in trial period, instead of prompting me to buy it. Then, I changed my system’s date to two months back and I tried to run the software and it notifies me that the system’s date is wrong because before two months, the software wasn’t there at all on the system (lol). :P

After that, I forwarded the date to a month and this time, it went all perfectly! :D

But then, the only thing is that I have to Google to know the correct date and day, as the system has got it all wrong :P

You will see in this guide that explaining how to do this for uTorrent basically explains how to do it for any bittorrent client. On to the tutorial…

Opening ports for a bittorrent client has nothing to do with the bittorrent client (well, except for the port number….that’s kind of important). Opening ports is all about working with your router’s settings. I will be using a Netgear router for this tutorial. Most routers’ have very similar settings and options, so it shouldn’t matter if you don’t have a Netgear router.

Step 1: Find out what port your program uses.

I use uTorrent, but you may use a different BitTorrent client. In just about every BitTorrent clients’ options, there is a place to change the port it uses. For uTorrent, you just go to Options->Preferences, and the connection options pop right up. As you can see below, the port is 17120. Make sure you write down this port. You’ll need it later.

Step 2: Find out your network IP address.

Click on your start menu, and select run. Once the run box is up, type “cmd” in the box.

Now, a dos-like box will open up. Type in ipconfig and press enter.

Next, you will get a result like this.

Write down the IP address as you’ll need this later

Step 3: Log into your router settings page.

This can be done by entering 192.168.1.1 into the address bar of your browser. After you have done this, you should be promoted to log into the router settings page. The default username is “admin” and the default password is “password”.

Step 4: Click on Port Forwarding/Port Triggering

Step 6: Forward your port from Step 1.

Now, you should be given a few different fields to fill in about the port you are forwarding. First, you want to give the port a name. I usually just name it the same as the program it is associated with, so in this case it would be uTorrent. Second, you want the port to be open for both TCP and UDP. Next, you put in the port from Step 1. It may ask for a range, but you can just put the same number for both the starting and ending ports. Finally, you put in your server IP address as found in Step 2.

Congratulations! Now, you should be able to download and share much faster!

Shumayal,