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Education / Linux / Networking / Technology

Cracking WEP – Some Words of Wisdom

by MadHatter on Nov 13, 2007 • No Comments

wificards

Cracking WEP may be a little more difficult than you think. Yes, we’ve all seen the WHAX video of how to crack WEP in 10 minutes and said “yes I could do that if I had time to get the distro… but I have more important things to do.” Well, being a college student with no social life (during the week anyways), I have had the time to have some fun with cracking WEP. Of course, in a lab environment (using my own router to practice with…). Throughout my experimentation, being also new to Linux, I found a few things you may soon realize and should research before attempting to crack WEP that may either encourage you to continue with this activity or give up entirely (but let’s remember, that’s not how you solve problems : ).

Monitor Mode:
A lot of people new to this whole scene think that they can pickup any wireless card, pop in their super secret Linux distro they got from another “computer kid” and “crack the neighbors’ internet for downloading music!” First of all, those who are interested in WEP security and vulnerabilities for this purpose are idiotic and deserve to be caught and prosecuted. There are a lot of people who think that the term “hacker” is cool and buys them popularity points. These kids are easy to point out, and are easily exposed. Don’t get me wrong, I am on no soap box preaching to the naïve and ill informed underneath me…I don’t claim to have any extensive knowledge on this subject. I’m as lost as any other geek trying to get this security stuff figured out and trying to have a little fun with it and share my experiences.
Alright, back to the point I was trying to make before I went off rambling. Monitor mode. This is where the wireless card captures packets without associating with the AP. Monitor mode is only supported for certain cards, and I believe only certain chipsets, but I could be wrong on that one. My original card (Orinoco gold classic FCC ID#
IMRWLPCE2411R) was able to switch to this mode which was great to get started. Do a Google search and see if yours is supported by installing specific drivers or natively. If it doesn’t, you are probably out of luck. Don’t waste your time looking for a way to do it without monitor, in my opinion; you are better off spending that time finding the right card to get instead. I will talk about cards later on. This is usually the 1st issue where those new to WEP cracking get lost and trail off to their social bookmarking site instead.

Card support on OS and program:
This somewhat ties into the monitor mode issue in regards to having a working wireless card. There are a few ways to go about WEP cracking, but the fastest and most effective/popular method I have found is using the aircrack suite. With this you can do just about everything. You will need to capture the packets and use injection to make the process move along more quickly. So, you’ve got a card that supports monitor mode, great! Now is the other thing your card needs to be compatible with, aireplay (included in the aircrack suite). This is the application that will perform 802.11 packet injection. 95% of popular wireless cards are not compatible with this application. If you want to capture packets without injection, but be prepared to sit at that AP for 2 weeks to get enough IV’s for an attempt at cracking.

The other issue is OS support for your card. You may also be lucky enough to have a card that is natively supported in the distro that you choose to use for cracking. However, there are many that require patches, or special drivers. In fact, almost all of them do. Some distros are nice enough to include a patch for your (S-T-D for my Orinoco). Once again, if you are new to Linux, if you think you can figure it out go for it, but if you are running into this as well as the monitor mode and packet injection issue, head to the store, not the BackTrack2 forums for help.

Don’t know how to spoof a MAC? Learn or forget it!
 Not that I encourage any illegal activities, and I DO NOT, but to be a good security expert, you need to know what the attacker will do to be able to counter-act. MAC spoofing is a great way to stay anonymous. Now this is an easy thing to learn quickly, but if it’s forgotten or disregarded, then you aren’t really doing it properly. A great simple program I found for this purpose is macchanger. I simply type “macchanger -a eth1″ in my terminal before beginning my test cracking. Simple and effective. This is just kind of a general warning that if you don’t know what you are doing then learn before doing anything. I would love to hear the story of someone who used this knowledge for the wrong purpose and got caught because they didn’t know how to spoof a MAC.

How much are you willing to spend?
Is this just a “Saturday afternoon project” sort of thing? If so, and you are lucky enough to already have a supported card, great for you! If you are like the other 99% of us who had to troubleshoot, again, you may want to consider investing in the right card. I took this route, and just got a deal on eBay for a newer proxim 8470. There are also a few prism 2.5 cards with an amazing 300mW of radio output power. If you have the budget, I would highly recommend them! Also, and antenna is almost a must! These can be relatively cheap, but none the less, adds to your cost.

Do you know Linux?
If you don’t, well this is a great project to get started. However, it’s not exactly user friendly to get started! If you run into any snags you will need to troubleshoot. Following the YouTube video never works hehe. This is a great way to get more familiar with Linux. That is what I did, and I have loved the knowledge I’ve gained from it.

The monitor mode I spoke of earlier not supported with the windows drivers. You can buy an awesome adapter called AirPcap that is said to be great, and work swiftly with Cain. The catch: this adapter is $200. Yikes!

All of the other programs I have found in windows for WEP cracking really suck, and don’t work AT ALL. Like I said, the airPcap is the only one with a reputation of working well. Airsnort has a windows version, but I have tried that too and it didn’t work. Perhaps you can get it working though. I didn’t spend much time on the windows side to find out.

So that is my rant about some common issues with WEP encryption, kind of a heads up for hobbyists, as well as an outlet of frustration with my own experience. Perhaps I will crack a WEP cracking video tutorial once I get it all working correctly with my new card (which is on its way as we speak : ).

Once again let me say that I am no credible expert on this subject, merely a hobbyist and a geek wanting a new project. I’ve spent about a month involved in this topic, and thought it was a worthy entry to write. If I’m wrong on some of my facts, please correct me! Send me an email and I will make sure to change it. Thanks for reading.

Education / Linux / Technology

Creating Backtrack 2 Live USB Drive

by MadHatter on Nov 6, 2007 • 4 Comments

usbdrive

A quick How-To for creating a bootable USB drive to load Backtrack 2.

This is very easy in windows. I just wanted to note it so I could remember it in the future and so others might not have to dig through the loads of badly organized information on the BackTrack2 forums and wiki. As noted before, this is for windows XP, and I will go ahead and do it step by step.

1. Download the Backtrack2 ISO

2. Insert your USB drive, and note what drive label it is given (ex: “M:”)

3. Use THIS utility (not sure who made it) to format your USB drive.

4. Format a FAT partition and do not do a quick format.

5. Open ISO that you downloaded in WINRAR.

6. Copy the files from that ISO to the USB drive. Once that transfer is complete, open your flash drive in windows. There should be two folders “boot” and “BT”.

7. Go to Start > Run and type “cmd” without the “” and press enter.

8. In this first line, type in the drive letter of your USB drive. (ex: “M:” without “”) and press enter.

9. type in “cd boot” and press enter

10. type in “bootinst.bat” and press enter.

11. This will bring up a batch file that will format the drive to boot the distro. Press any key to continue (WARNING: make sure you are doing this on your flash drive. If you do on the same drive as your windows partition you will screw up your MBR, which makes XP unable to boot without being repaired.)

12. If there are no errors, and it says it is ready to boot, then simply press any key to exit the window. Also close your cmd window.

13. Now you are ready! Just reboot, and make sure you boot from USB instead of the hard drive your windows installation is on. You should be able to boot up Backtrack2 just fine now.

If there are any corrections with my method please send me an email and I will correct it. This is pretty simple stuff, and should take about 3 minutes (minus the download time for the ISO). Have fun!

Education / Linux / Technology

Sharing files in ubuntu using samba to access over your network

by MadHatter on Oct 31, 2007 • No Comments

So, while setting up my laptop with the new version of ubuntu (7.10) I found lack of easy to read documentation on a lot of pretty simple tasks. It took me quite a bit of digging for some tasks, and some help from friends with further linux experience. Also, google is definitely your friend! So, I made a few notes while setting up, and I thought I would post some as tutorials for new 7.10 users. I poilished them up a bit. This is my first, a tutorial on how to share files from your ubuntu machine to your windows one. This is definitely for new users to the OS, and is very basic with instructions. From a n00b with this OS to n00bs wanting to learn. Enjoy:

Sharing files in ubuntu using samba to access over network:

1.Just create a new folder on your desktop.

2.Right click the folder and click share.

3.At this point it will tell you that the sharing services are not installed. Go ahead and install both services.

4.If the install finishes successfully, then go back and share the folder giving the permissions you would like to and make sure you set it up to use the SMB file sharing type. You will follow the share procedure #2 and #4 every time you want to share a folder over the network.

5.Open up the terminal and type in (without the ” “) “sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf” and press enter. (you may be prompted for a password – type in the administrator password and press enter).

6.At the top, look at the binoculars icon that says “Find”. Type in “browseable” and find it.

7.Make the no a yes, or leave it as yes if it is already there by default.

8.Delete the “;” before the statement.

9.Look about 10 lines under that previously edited one to one that says writeable. repeat the same “yes” and “;” deletion process.

10.Save the document and exit

11.Open another terminal and type “sudo smbpasswd -a username” replace the username with the user you wish to access these files. Here is an example:
“sudo smbpasswd -a user1“

12.It will now prompt you for a new smb password. This will be the password you will use to access the share, so make it something secure.

13.Go to your windows machine and test. for example – I brought up a “My Computer” window and typed in the box “\\192.168.1.100″ instead (replace my IP with your linux machine hostname or IP.)

14. You should be prompted for credentials now. Type in the username you added before, and the password you just created, and press Enter.

** If it doesn’t work, you did something wrong. Heh actually just go through the smbpasswd procedure again and make sure you didn’t make an error with your new username or password. After that you may want to try asking for help in the ubuntuforums… Feel free to ask me, but I am by no means a linux expert! I am merely passing on the hard to find information for simple tasks like folder sharing. Also, if I made any mistakes or there is an easier way you would like me to post just send me an email and let me know.

Networking / Technology

5 Uses for an Old PC

by MadHatter on Sep 6, 2007 • 1 Comment

Got that old family computer laying around just gathering dust? You hate to throw perfectly good hardware away, and so you toss it aside and say “I will figure something out to do with it eventually”. Well, here are a few ideas I have had in similar situations, all of them turning out to be quite benificial and usefull for old hardware. There are endless ideas and possibilites, but here are 5 pretty basic projects.

1. Experiment with Linux. Linux is a great thing to be at least familiar with. Just grab a “Live CD”, either by downloading or ordering, and boot your PC to its CD-ROM drive. You can then experiment in this environment without making any permanent changes to the system. For those really looking to further their understanding of linux, I would recommend installing it to your local hard drive (assuming you are not overwriting data). Linux file systems can differ dramatically from a windows environment, and for the ones I have dealt with, there are many things to be learned aobut the parition setup and allocation. With a LiveCD you can bypass having to deal with that, but it does limit what you can do as far as playing around with the operating system.

linuxbanner

2. Create a file server. Throw some hard drives in the box (it is up to you whether you would like to setup a RAID array for these drives. For this sort of arrangement, you may also need additional hardware (a RAID controller) for this setup.) Keep in mind that almost all properly setup file servers used in the business world are on some sort of RAID configuration. You can configure the box to any setup you would like. I enjoy a VNC only box (no monitor/keyboard/mouse attached) that I can throw in a closet and only run a patch cable and power cable out for. If you are looking at making a file server please keep some form of backup in mind.

3. Setup a local server for WAN use. I set one of these up a few years ago and couldn’t be happier with it. Best use of old hardware I have found so far! On mine I run VNC and just created a DNS2GO account so I wouldn’t have to stay on top of the always-changing IP of a residential line. This sort of configuration allows for a lot of customization. You could create it to run all messaging protocols, a place to save email using thunderbird, outlook, etc. Also can dedicate one place for any file sharing applications (if you desire to use one). It saves a lot of time having these sorts of applications on one machine rather then spreading the tasks around to 2-3 different ones. Customization is endless, and it’s very convenient to log into a familiar work environment when you are in need of your word processing, graphic design, or other applications at a workstation with only internet access and the minimum Windows XP of Vista system applications.

4. Create a Home Theater PC (HTPC). Now, depending on what you want to do with the machine really depends on the hardware you are using for it, or how much $ you are willing to dump into it. If you would like merely a TV tuner, DVD player, or to play similar video files which don’t demand much from graphics or processor you may be fine with something as minimal as a p3 with 512 MB or RAM. Of course, check the minimum requirements for the TV Tuner you purchase or any of the file formats you play. However, even if you don’t want to spend a fortune re-building an old box, you can do great things by just installing a TV tuner (around $50 nowadays) and a DVD-ROM drive if it is not included. The only other part needed will be an adapter from DVI to HDMI (depending on the desired resolution). There are a lot of variables with creating a Home Theatre PC that will probably need to be covered in a separate entry. Basically, for TV viewing and DVD play, the demand on CPU and memory isn’t too bad, and an older system with a few newer parts may perform well. Play around with it, definitely a worthy weekend project.

5. Mod that case! An entire community within the computer enthusiast world. Case modding is the art of modifying a computer case (usually tower-cases vs. laptops) to improve looks or performance of the unit, or both! There is anything from computers crammed into Nintendo Entertainment System cases, to computers with UV lighted, water cooled components.

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These communites are mainly composed of galleries, tutorials, and contests about “case mods”. It is easy to find them all around and find something you like and want to imitate or that inspires you. Case mods can range from $1 to thousands of dollars, it all just depends on what you would like to create with the ordinary p3 sitting in the closet and how much time you want to dedicate to making it happen.

Links:
Ubuntu LiveCD Download

Knoppix LiveCD Download

UltraVNC

Bit-Tech – good read for some high budget case mods

I do plan on creating a more in-depth article about HTPC creation, so check back soon. I also may start up with a few photoshop tutorials now that things are a bit more up and running. Thanks for reading!

-MadHatter

Technology

Keyboard Junkie Gossip

by MadHatter on Feb 23, 2007 • 1 Comment

Last year in the tech world, an idea was born. The Optimus Keyboard. No, it has nothing to do with The Transformers! Art Lebedev Studio came up with some amazing concept drawings that amazed geeks everywhere.

What makes this keyboard so revolutionary? Well, many things. The first, of course is how each individual key has its own display (most likely using OLED technology), which may be changed to anything that the user wishes to symbolize executing a command, such as a Firefox icon representing the opening of the browser. The possibilities are endless! This not only makes the keyboard junkies go crazy due to the insane amount of key combinations, but also appeals to the graphic artists who could create icons, animations, or other graphics/designs that could be very useful. Because in the notes they stated that it would be an open-source keyboard, it gives programmers the opportunity to create many revolutionary apps to use with this hardware. It would be amazing to see a section of sourceforge dedicated to Optimus applications.

Everyone wanted to know how to get their hands on this stunning piece of hardware when the craze first emerged. Unfortunately, it slowly became known that it was only a concept. However, as most know, Art Lebedev noticed pretty quickly the overwhelming interest in the product, and took the obvious business move, finding out how to put this into mass production. Since the day they started looking at these options, it’s safe to say that it has been one dissapointment after another. With release dates pressed back, rise in estimated price, and slow progress in over a year, people have lost interest.

I still follow this product, by viewing the project blog about once every couple of weeks, checking out the site for updates, and digging for the latest rumors about it. As a high school student working part time, it’s impossible to justify spending $1,300 for a keyboard. Yes, the possibilities are endless, the looks are tempting, and the urge to buy new hardware is hard to resist for any geek, but at such a high price, who can afford this? My guess is that the main interest will be design company’s with specific needs for this product. I also predict that it will not be properly advertised for this market. Even the concept drawings were focused on gamers. With these things in mind, this great product might not be given the run it was meant for.

The ideal release for the keyboard would be to market to the gamers, and those looking for more than a regular keyboard can give them. This was properly demonstrated by Logitech with their release of the G15 (shown above) which has become a favorite and also a controversial topic in the gaming community, mostly affecting WOW, Battlefield 2, and Counter-Strike players.

My personal experience with the G15 has been positive overall. The Logitech software for macro programing is easy to use, and suprisingly powerful. A must have, if purchasing this keyboard is to download LCD Studio. This freeware allows the user to create displays for their LCD’s. LCD Studio gives the user a lot of creativite options, and can be quite a convenient tool. The design I created for my g15 includes the RSS feed of digg.com, Gmail notification, Winamp controls and display, as well as other system information.

Make no mistake, the G15 keyboard is for gamers, but there are many other uses for it as well. Photoshop, for example, I have programmed a little over thirty key shortcuts for either confusing combinations to remember, or grouping certain shortcuts together for my convenience. There are many pre-made “profiles” for the “g keys” that can be found within five minutes of searching.

Some who still follow the Optimus concept stick with it, and await the release. Even with a few devoted fans, the keyboard will never reach its potential. It needs a strong community behind it to create applications, graphics, and find good uses for it. This is why the g15 is so successful. Perhaps the cost per unit of the Optimus will be unexpectedly reduced, but with around $10 per key it is unlikely.

Another keyboard that has caught my eye is the DAS Keyboard(shown below). Most keyboard junkies should be familiar with this device. The DAS “has been designed to produce even greater speed by providing responsive, tactile feedback with its new gold-plated and clicky high-end mechanical key switches.” Enough said, a great keyboard, which definitely gives a bold look and feel to a true geek’s rig. It’s basic, but simplicity does go a long way.

The point of this post is to bring to attention what the future may hold for keyboards, explain the situation with The Optimus, and to give a few alternatives to those keyboard junkies looking for a new toy. Please let me know your opinions about any of this. Tips about some other great keyboards are always welcome(I know there are some unique, and wierd ones out on the market that I left out in this article.)

-MadHatter

Personal / Uncategorized

Welcome to MaddHat.com v2!

by MadHatter on Feb 8, 2007 • 5 Comments

It’s been a while, but I’m back online! The site isn’t even close to being finished, but slowly things should be coming together. With v2 I hope to re-create my old blog, and maintain it. I’m also working on getting a gallery up for my digital artwork and photography. I will make sure and add the old videos as well. BB Forums may also get a makeover, depending on if I decide to bring it back to life. While this site is slowly coming back together, please feel free to check out my other project on the net, BB Radio. Check back soon!

-MadHatter

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