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)

Checking card compatibility


There are a number of factors to consider when we work with a wireless card in Linux, and the most important one is to know what the chipset of our wireless card is. This is because we have to know whether we have a driver to support the card, and it takes work to determine what that chipset is. The challenging cards are normally the ones that are built into laptops; in most cases, this card will not work in BackTrack without doing some work and spending some time on it.

The first place to look for information, whether or not your card will work, is on the BackTrack website. There is a listing of supported cards on the BackTrack website at http://www.BackTrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Drivers. The site is shown in the next screenshot:

Getting a wireless card to work can be a challenging process, and it is often time-consuming. However, there are times when you do get lucky and the card is recognized at boot, but more often than not, it takes additional...