Ethical hacking: wireless hacking with Kismet

Introduction

To continue our ethical hacking series, we are now going to dive deeper into the process of wardriving, wireless hacking and the roles that the Linux tool Kismet plays in an ethical hacker’s toolbox. 

We have all heard that it is important to secure your wireless network with WPA2 encryption, channel control and a strong, non-default password. But why? What sort of attacks are organizations and individuals actually protecting themselves against?

In short, whether a hacker has a target in mind or they are on the lookout for any vulnerable device worth attacking, wireless networks are a common vector to exploit. In either case, hackers — both black- and white-hat hackers — can use a powerful and highly configurable tool called Kismet to identify potential target wireless networks, capture specific information about that network to use with other tools and develop a plan to further penetrate that network.

Because wireless networks are meant for convenience and flexibility, hackers are able to turn these advantages for users into potential vulnerabilities for their own use. For example: Without prior knowledge of a target’s network or user credentials, a penetration tester can “sniff” out a network, watch its packet traffic, identify specific routers and then utilize a variety of different techniques to gain access to them to further their goals.

So just how can an ethical hacker use Kismet? Let’s dive right in.

Overview of Kismet

In short, Kismet is a very powerful wireless sniffing tool that is found in Kali Linux. This is an open-source tool very familiar to ethical hackers, computer network security professionals and penetration testers. While it can run on Windows and macOS, most users prefer to run Kismet on Linux because of a bigger range of configurations and drivers available. Wirelessly, Kismet is able to sniff (Read more...)