Book Image

BackTrack - Testing Wireless Network Security

By : Kevin Cardwell
Book Image

BackTrack - Testing Wireless Network Security

By: Kevin Cardwell

Overview of this book

Wireless networks are everywhere. You have probably set one up yourself, but have you ever wondered just how safe you are while browsing online? In the majority of cases, the default settings for your networks are not enough to protect you. With your data being transferred over the air, it can be easily plucked and used by anyone who knows how. Don't let it happen to you.BackTrack - Testing Wireless Network Security will help you secure your wireless networks and keep your personal data safe. With this book, you will learn how to configure your hardware for optimum security, find network security holes, and fix them.BackTrack - Testing Wireless Network Security looks at what tools hackers use and shows you how to defend yourself against them. Taking you from no prior knowledge all the way to a fully secure environment, this guide provides useful tips every step of the way. Learn how to select a wireless card to work with the Backtrack tools, run spectrum analysis scans using kismet, set up test networks, and perform attacks against wireless networks. Use the tools aircrack-ng and airodump-ng to crack the wireless encryption used on the network. You will learn everything you need to know to set up your wireless network for use within Backtrack and also how to defend yourself against the included attack tools.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Chapter 2. Working with the Wireless Card

In this chapter, we are going to look at the following topics with respect to using BackTrack:

  • Checking card compatibility

  • Detecting the wireless card during the boot process

  • Detecting the wireless card using iwconfig

  • Wireless card modes

  • Protocol analysis with the wireless card

Now that we have a configured and updated BackTrack, it is time to turn our attention to working with our wireless card. Unfortunately, with the Linux operating system, this is not as straightforward as we would hope. The work that will need to be done depends on a number of factors. Out of all of the factors, the most important one is that Linux goes by the chipset of the card.