How do you hack wifi encryption keys?

Question

Without buying any hardware

Answer 1

You can call your local police department and inform then you're interested in stealing interstate services and see how they'll help you. :)

Answer 2

When you say "encryption keys," I'm assuming you mean a wireless network with WEP encryption. WEP is very basic security for a network and is therefore very easy to bypass or exploit. However, accessing someone else's network could for unlawful depending on where you live, so I take no resposibility for what you do.

Basically, WEP encrypts each packet as it is broadcast through the air. This prevents computers that do not know the key from reading the data. However, your computer can still capture the data and decrypt it.

To do this, you will need a wireless adapter (which I assume you have) and a group of programs called the Aircrack suite. The four programs in the suite that we will mainly be using are airmon, airodump, aireplay, and aircrack. These programs are available for free for both the Linux and Windows operating system. Downloads them at http://www.aircrack-ng.org/

I would highly advise you to download a free version of Linux called Backtrack. It is available for free at http://www.remote-exploit.org/  It fits on one CD, so you don't have to install it to your hard drive or anything, just boot into your CD drive. Backtrack includes the aircrack programs.

Once you have the programs, you will use airmon to set your wireless card to monitor mode, which allows it to capture packets.

Then you can use airodump, which scans for networks and captures packets and saves them in a file. For a network with WEP 64-bit, you will need 300,000 packets. For one with 128-bit, you will need 1,500,000 packets. This may seem like a lot, but the next program can help.

If no one is using the network, there are no packets, so you can use aireplay to "inject" packets into the network. This will generate hundreds of packets per second for you to capture, so it won't be long until you get the required number.

Once you have enough packets, you can use aircrack to crack the encyption. This usually takes less than a second, assuming you have enough packets, and the encryption key will be displayed on the screen.

For a detailed, step-by-step guide to each of these programs, visit http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/v...

Once you know how to use these programs, you should be able to break into any network in 20-30 minutes. Aircrack can also be used to break into networks with WPA security, but thats a whole other story...

Answer 3

If this is an exercise in computer security (and not stealing bandwidth!!!) then check this out:

http://www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.d...

You'll need at least a slightly advanced general pc background to follow this.

Answer 4

lol..... u could get arrested................................... goood......................................