Question

Wireless internet has increased the capability for people to access the internet. Especially in areas where laying cables is difficult. With all of the advantages of wireless internet, there are also disadvantages. What are the common vulnerabilities of wireless networks that are often exploited? What tools do hackers use? Last but not least what are the different forms of authentication for WEP and WPA2 networks?

Answer 1

In the case of wireless communication, the router in the default state is not encrypted thus any hacker can easily configure the router in order to hack into our system in order to meet his demands.

In the case of wireless connection, we are connecting to the system once and next time it usually connects automatically thus in this way sniffer can configure his system to be like the one which we usually connect to this will make us connect through his network and thus it can steal the stuff easily.

The following are a couple of Softwares which are usually used by attackers.

1. Aircrack: is one of the software which is used for finding the password of the wifi-router to which the user is connected. It can connect to the same network in order to exploit the user.
2. Wireshark: is another software with which the attacker can sniff the network traffic and can exploit the user.

WEP is a very old protocol that is now not in use due to its vulnerability, it uses the RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4) stream cipher for encryption and authentication.

WPA2 is the best protocol to be used total due to its encryption and authentication algorithms. Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) is used in this protocol for encryption and Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP) is used for authentication purposes. Thus due to these advanced algorithms, this is considered a secure protocol.

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