Ethical Hacking – Wireless

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.

 

Experienced advanced operations engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Windows Server, Azure, Ethical Hacking, Office 365, Exchange, Jenkins, SCCM, Octopus Deploy and PowerShell to name a few. Strong engineering professional with a big passion for knowledge.

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