In this post I will go through the vocabulary around the wireless technologies. I will also show tools you can use to test in your own environment.
This post is part of a series called “Ethical Hacking”.
Vocabulary
- Ad Hoc Mode
- Ad-hoc wireless networks are used for peer-to-peer communication between devices when central access points or routers are not available.
- Basic Service Set (BSS)
- Are units of devices operating with the same medium access characteristics.
- Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS)
- Is an ad hoc network that contains no access points, which means they cannot connect to any other basic service set.
- Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
- Computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers.
- Full-duplex
- Communication between two components means that both can transmit and receive information between each other simultaneously. Telephones are full-duplex systems so both parties on the phone can talk and listen at the same time.
- Half-duplex
- In half-duplex systems, the transmission and reception of information must happen alternately. While one point is transmitting, the other must only receive. Walkie-talkie radio communication is a half-duplex system, this is characterised by saying “over” at the end of a transmission to signify that the party is ready to receive information.
- Infrastructure Mode
- In wireless networking, infrastructure mode bridges wireless local networks with wired Ethernet networks. It scales the network to support clients.
- Access Points (AP)
- In computer networking, a wireless access point, or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows a Wi-Fi device to connect to a wired network.
- Basic Service Area (BSA)
- Physical area of coverage provided by an AP. Clients can move within this area and maintain coverage with AP.
- SSID
- Stands for “Service Set Identifier.” An SSID is a unique ID and is used for naming wireless networks.
- Distribution System (DS)
- A wireless distribution system (DS) is a system enabling the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the traditional requirement for a wired backbone to link them.
- Wireless LAN Controller (WLC)
- Is used in combination with the Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP) to manage light-weight access points in large quantities by the network administrator or network operations center.
- Extended Service Service Set
- An extended service set (ESS) is one or more interconnected basic service sets (BSSs) and their associated LANs. Each BSS consists of a single access point (AP) together with all wireless client devices (stations, also called STAs) creating a local or enterprise 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN).
- Received Signal Strength Indicator (RRSI)
- In telecommunications, received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is a measurement of the power present in a received radio signal.
- Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP)
- EIRP is the effective isotropic radiated power. It is the amount of power an isotropic antenna would need to radiate to produce the measured radiated power for a given angle.
- dBm
- Is an abbreviation for the power ratio in decibels (dB) of the measured power referenced to one milliwatt (mW).
Tools
- inSSIDer
- inSSIDer is a Wi-Fi network scanner application for Microsoft Windows and OS X.
- airomon-ng
- Aircrack-ng is a network software suite consisting of a detector, packet sniffer, WEP and WPA/WPA2-PSK cracker and analysis tool for 802.11 wireless LANs.