Unauthorised Access: Physical Penetration Testing For IT Security Teams

7.6. Summary

This chapter has been a departure from the rest of this book as it has been purely technical. While I've attempted to create a cookbook approach (in which you just follow the instructions) to defeating wireless security, you may only grasp the contents once you've actually sat down and attempted one or more of the attacks. You should do this with your own equipment and be comfortable with the results before even thinking about carrying out a wireless attack on a client site. In this chapter, we've looked at:

• Wireless Hacking Equipment – These are my personal preferences and we add to them in Chapter 8. You've been introduced to BackTrack which is an excellent environment for learning about defeating wireless security and it does a lot of other things besides.

• Wireless Security Standards and Protocols – It makes sense to have a good practical knowledge of the basics of wireless networking before embarking on wireless hacking.

• Wireless Encryption – Encryption and authentication in wireless access points are often the same thing. The two most common shared key systems are WEP and WPA, both of which can be broken. Other systems exist which require a different approach.

• Wireless Network Attacks – This topic covered both discovering wireless access points and defeating common security measures such as encryption and MAC filtering.

• Wireless Client Attacks – This is a relatively new breed of attack that, when correctly deployed, can be used to great effect against even the most ...