Wireless attacks, A to Z
In our buzzword-filled industry, wrapping your arms around wireless attacks and their potential business impacts can be tough. This tip tries to bring order to this chaos by providing a reference list of attacks against 802.11 and 802.1X, categorized by type of threat, and mapped to associated hacker methods and tools.
Wireless Security Lunchtime Learning
By Lisa Phifer In our buzzword-filled industry, wrapping your arms around wireless attacks and their potential...
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business impacts can be tough. This tip tries to bring order to this chaos by providing a reference list of attacks against 802.11 and 802.1X, categorized by type of threat, and mapped to associated hacker methods and tools.
Access control attacks
These attacks attempt to penetrate a network by using wireless or evading WLAN access control measures, like AP MAC filters and 802.1X port access controls.
| Type of Attack | Description | Methods and Tools |
| War Driving | Discovering wireless LANs by listening to beacons or sending probe requests, thereby providing launch point for further attacks. | DStumbler, KisMAC, MacStumbler, NetStumbler, WaveStumbler, Wellenreiter |
| Rogue Access Points | Installing an unsecured AP inside firewall, creating open backdoor into trusted network. | Any hardware or software AP |
| Ad Hoc Associations | Connecting directly to an unsecured station to circumvent AP security or to attack station. | Any wireless card or USB adapter |
| MAC Spoofing | Reconfiguring an attacker's MAC address to pose as an authorized AP or station. | Bwmachak, changemac.sh, SirMACsAlot, SMAC, Wellenreiter, wicontrol |
| 802.1X RADIUS Cracking | Recovering RADIUS secret by brute force from 802.1X access request, for use by evil twin AP. | Packet capture tool on LAN or network path between AP and RADIUS server |
Confidentiality attacks
These attacks attempt to intercept private information sent over wireless associations, whether sent in the clear or encrypted by 802.11 or higher layer protocols.
| Type of Attack | Description | Methods and Tools |
| Eavesdropping | Capturing and decoding unprotected application traffic to obtain potentially sensitive information. | bsd-airtools, Ethereal, Ettercap, Kismet, commercial analyzers |
| WEP Key Cracking | Capturing data to recover a WEP key using brute force or Fluhrer-Mantin-Shamir (FMS) cryptanalysis. | Aircrack, AirSnort, chopchop, dwepcrack, WepAttack, WepDecrypt, WepLab |
| Evil Twin AP | Masquerading as an authorized AP by beaconing the WLAN's service set identifier (SSID) to lure users. | cqureAP, HermesAP, HostAP, OpenAP, Quetec, WifiBSD |
| AP Phishing | Running a phony portal or Web server on an evil twin AP to "phish" for user logins, credit card numbers. | Airsnarf, Hotspotter |
| Man in the Middle | Running traditional man-in-the-middle attack tools on an evil twin AP to intercept TCP sessions or SSL/SSH tunnels. | dsniff, Ettercap |
Integrity attacks
These attacks send forged control, management or data frames over wireless to mislead the recipient or facilitate another type of attack (e.g., DoS).
| Type of Attack | Description | Methods and Tools |
| 802.11 Frame Injection | Crafting and sending forged 802.11 frames. | Airpwn, File2air, libradiate, void11, WEPWedgie, wnet dinject/reinject |
| 802.11 Data Replay | Capturing 802.11 data frames for later (modified) replay. | Capture + Injection Tools |
| 802.11 Data Deletion | Jamming an intended receiver to prevent delivery while simultaneously spoofing ACKs for deleted data frames. | Jamming + Injection Tools |
| 802.1X EAP Replay | Capturing 802.1X Extensible Authentication Protocols (e.g., EAP Identity, Success, Failure) for later replay. | Wireless Capture + Injection Tools between station and AP |
| 802.1X RADIUS Replay | Capturing RADIUS Access-Accept or Reject messages for later replay. | Ethernet Capture + Injection Tools between AP and authentication server |
Authentication attacks
Intruders use these attacks to steal legitimate user identities and credentials to access otherwise private networks and services.
| Type of Attack | Description | Methods and Tools |
| Shared Key Guessing | Attempting 802.11 Shared Key Authentication with guessed, vendor default or cracked WEP keys. | WEP Cracking Tools |
| PSK Cracking | Recovering a WPA PSK from captured key handshake frames using a dictionary attack tool. | coWPAtty, KisMAC, wpa_crack, wpa-psk-bf |
| Application Login Theft | Capturing user credentials (e.g., e-mail address and password) from cleartext application protocols. | Ace Password Sniffer, Dsniff, PHoss, WinSniffer |
| Domain Login Cracking | Recovering user credentials (e.g., Windows login and password) by cracking NetBIOS password hashes, using a brute-force or dictionary attack tool. | John the Ripper, L0phtCrack, Cain |
| VPN Login Cracking | Recovering user credentials (e.g., PPTP password or IPsec Preshared Secret Key) by running brute-force attacks on VPN authentication protocols. | ike_scan and ike_crack (IPsec), anger and THC-pptp-bruter (PPTP) |
| 802.1X Identity Theft | Capturing user identities from cleartext 802.1X Identity Response packets. | Capture Tools |
| 802.1X Password Guessing | Using a captured identity, repeatedly attempting 802.1X authentication to guess the user's password. | Password Dictionary |
| 802.1X LEAP Cracking | Recovering user credentials from captured 802.1X Lightweight EAP (LEAP) packets using a dictionary attack tool to crack the NT password hash. | Anwrap, Asleap, THC-LEAPcracker |
| 802.1X EAP Downgrade | Forcing an 802.1X server to offer a weaker type of authentication using forged EAP-Response/Nak packets. | File2air, libradiate |
Availability attacks
These attacks impede delivery of wireless services to legitimate users, either by denying them access to WLAN resources or by crippling those resources.
| Type of Attack | Description | Methods and Tools |
| AP Theft | Physically removing an AP from a public space. | "Five finger discount" |
| RF Jamming | Transmitting at the same frequency as the target WLAN, perhaps at a power that exceeds regulation Equivalent Isotopically Radiated Power (EIRP). | RF Jammer, Microwave oven, AP with Alchemy/HyperWRT firmware |
| Queensland DoS | Exploiting the CSMA/CA Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) mechanism to make a channel appear busy. | An adapter that supports CW Tx mode, with a low-level utility to invoke continuous transmit |
| 802.11 Beacon Flood | Generating thousands of counterfeit 802.11 beacons to make it hard for stations to find a legitimate AP. | FakeAP |
| 802.11 Associate / Authenticate Flood | Sending forged Authenticates or Associates from random MACs to fill a target AP's association table. | Airjack, File2air, Macfld, void11 |
| 802.11 TKIP MIC Exploit | Generating invalid TKIP data to exceed the target AP's MIC error threshold, suspending WLAN service. | File2air, wnet dinject |
| 802.11 Deauthenticate Flood | Flooding station(s) with forged Deauthenticates or Disassociates to disconnecting users from an AP. | Airjack, Omerta, void11 |
| 802.1X EAP-Start Flood | Flooding an AP with EAP-Start messages to consume resources or crash the target. | QACafe, File2air, libradiate |
| 802.1X EAP-Failure | Observing a valid 802.1X EAP exchange, and then sending the station a forged EAP-Failure message. | QACafe, File2air, libradiate |
| 802.1X EAP-of-Death | Sending a malformed 802.1X EAP Identity response known to cause some APs to crash. | QACafe, File2air, libradiate |
| 802.1X EAP Length Attacks | Sending EAP type-specific messages with bad length fields to try to crash an AP or RADIUS server. | QACafe, File2air, libradiate |
Note: Many of these tools can be found in the Auditor Security Collection, a KNOPPIX-based toolkit intended for use during penetration testing and vulnerability assessment.
>> Move to the next tip: Wi-Fi vulnerability assessment checklist
This was last published in April 2006
