

For more details about how the handshake works, refer to this blog. The 4-Way Handshake utilizes an exchange of four frames between the STA and AP to set up an encrypted communications channel. The ‘airodump-ng’ tool captures the name of the AP as well as the 4-way handshake. Now we connect a client to our target AP to simulate a victim client connecting to their respective AP for demonstration purposes.
#Measure wifi signal strength in kali mac#
We run the ‘airodump-ng’ tool, while specifying the mac address/BSSID of our target AP, the channel number of 5, and name of the output files. The passive method involves monitoring wireless traffic to the AP and when a client/STA (station) connects to it, the SSID name will be transferred between the AP and STA which can be captured by our Alfa card. There are passive and active methods to reveal hidden SSIDs as well as capturing WPA handshakes. We can press ‘q’ 2 times to quit out of ‘airodump-ng’ tool. Take note of the BSSID and the channel number of the target. We will be targeting our test router which is highlighted above. We have found multiple APs using hidden SSIDs. Let us first search for hidden Wi-Fi networks nearby using ‘airodump-ng’ with the ‘essid’ flag set to null. This is not a security feature and the SSID name can be obtained by using specific tools like the ones we are using. While using the Hidden SSID feature, the AP will replace the original SSID value in the beacon frame with a null string. Decloaking Hidden Wi-Fi NetworksĪccess Points (APs) have an option to hide the SSID value they broadcast in all beacon frames. Shows the authentication mechanism used by the AP.ĭisplays the Network SSID (name of the network).

This column shows the cipher used in the network – e.g., WEP, WPA, WPA2. This column shows the maximum speed supported by the AP in MB/s. It shows the channel on which the network operates on. This column shows the number of data packets being transferred.ĭisplays the number of data packets collected in the past 10 seconds. The number of received beacons are displayed here. This field indicates the current signal strength in dBm. It’s basically the MAC address of the Access Point or wireless router. Let’s go through each column to understand what is being displayed.īSSID stands for Basic Service Set Identifier. We can see a lot of information being displayed on the terminal. Note that we are not specifying any particular channel, so ‘airodump-ng’ will automatically switch between channels. We can find nearby Wi-Fi networks by using the ‘airodump-ng’ tool in Kali, along with specifying our interface name. We will be using the aircrack-ng suite in this blog post. Next, we can move on to the attack phase. We have now successfully setup our wireless adapter. To verify whether our ‘wlan0’ interface is in ‘monitor’ mode, we can run ‘iwconfig wlan0’ command. Now, we can set our wireless adapter to ‘monitor’ mode. This can be done by using ‘airmon-ng check kill’ command. But before we do that, we need to check whether there are any running processes which could cause problems and kill them. To set our wireless adapter in ‘monitor’ mode, we can use the ‘airmon-ng’ tool. We can see that the ‘wlan0’ interface is now active and that it’s in ‘managed’ mode. To check whether kali detects our wireless adapter, we can use the ‘iwconfig’ command.
#Measure wifi signal strength in kali install#
In our case we install the realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms from the default kali repository using apt install command. Next, we boot up our Kali VM and install the respective wireless device driver. First, we need to pass through our wireless USB adapter to Kali Linux by configuring the Virtual Box settings. We will be covering the following topics:īefore we get into the good stuff, we need to properly set up our Alfa card. We will be using Kali Linux in VirtualBox and a USB wireless adapter (Alfa AWUS036ACH which uses Realtek RTL8812AU chipset ) which can support monitor mode and packet injection. e., not performing de-authentication attacks).

In Part 1 of the Wi-Fi Hacking series, we are going to delve into Wi-Fi hacking, specifically on Wi-Fi network decloaking, capturing WPA handshakes and obtaining cleartext passphrase using passive techniques ( i. Households are also at risk, owing to the proliferation of IoT-connected devices and appliances. Malicious hackers frequently opt to penetrate firms by compromising their Wi-Fi networks, mainly due to the nature of Wi-Fi and its methods for enabling network access. It establishes wireless network connections using radio waves. Wi-Fi stands for wireless network technology.
