Gaining Access

Gaining access attack is the second part of the network penetration testing. In this section, we will connect to the network. This will allow us to launch more powerful attacks and get more accurate information. If a network doesn't use encryption, we can just connect to it and sniff out unencrypted data. If a network is wired, we can use a cable and connect to it, perhaps through changing our MAC address. The only problem is when the target use encryption like WEP, WPA, WPA2. If we do encounter encrypted data, we need to know the key to decrypt it, that's the main purpose of this chapter.

If the network uses encryption, we can't get anywhere unless we decrypt it. In this section, we will discuss that how to break that encryption and how to gain access to the networks whether they use WEP/WPA/WPA2.

This section will cover the following topics:

• WEP Introduction
• Basic WEP cracking
• Fake authentication attack
• ARP request replay
• WPA theory
• Handshake theory
• Capturing handshakes
• Creating wordlists
• Wordlist cracking
• Securing network from attacks