[RESEARCH] How Secure Of Your Wifi Netowrk

Some information security experts still suggested to hide your SSID and set MAC address filtering in addition to WPA2, AES and strong passphrase setting in order to keep your wireless network secure.

However, most wireless hacking tools can unhide the hidden SSID, meanwhile, MAC address can be easily spoofed. Fortunately, there is a feature that can be used to harden your wireless network. It is namely Protected Management Frames or IEEE 802.11w even it is still not a standard since 2009.

What are Protected Management Frames (IEEE 802.11w) ?

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA2 with Protected Management Frames provides WPA2 protection for unicast and multicast management action frames. Unicast management action frames are protected from both eavesdropping and forging, and multicast management action frames are protected from forging. WPA2 with Protected Management Frames augments WPA2 privacy protections already in place for data frames with mechanisms to improve the resiliency of mission-critical networks.

In order to understand how does it work for the security of a wireless network, I did some experiments for the purpose.

Hardware

(1) Home wireless router with the feature of Protected Management Frames;
(2) Android 6.0 at 2.4GHz smartphone;
(3) Android 7.0 at 5GHz smartphone;
(3) Macbook Pro (Retina Mid 2012) with macOS High Sierra (10.13.4) at 5GHz;
(4) Macbook Air (Mid 2013) with macOS High Sierra (10.13.4) at 5GHz;
(4) Lenovo Thinkpad X201s (as 2.4GHz attacker); and
(5) TP-Link Archer T4UHP (as 2.4/5GHz attacker)

Software

(1) Parrot Security OS 4.0.1 64-bit;
(2) WAIDPS 1.0 R6j; and
(3) Aircrack-NG 1.2

Lenovo Thinkpad X201s installed Parrot Security OS 4.0.1 with the latest update and running WAIDPS which is powered by Aircrack-NG 1.2 as attacker.

The home wireless router and the testing wifi devices are set to WPA2 and AES encryption. The firmware of the wireless router is up-to-date. Since the home wireless router is dual bands, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, I set some of the testing devices to 5GHz. The home wireless router is set to AP mode as I already have a wired router in the network.

Once the 4-way handshake is captured from wireless router and devices, attackers can brute force the captured packets to obtain the passphrase of the wireless router.

Experiment

The Protected Management Frames can be set to "disabled", "capable" and "required" on the home wireless router.

(a) Disabled

When the Protected Management Frames (PMF) at the wireless router is set to "Disabled". All wireless devices can be disassociated and the 4-way handshake can be captured.

(b) Capable

When the PMF is set to "Capable" at the wireless router, all devices can connect to the router without problem. However, the wireless devices can be disassociated and the 4-way handshake can be captured.

(c) Required

When the PMF is set to "Required", only Macbook Pro and Macbook Air can be connected to the wireless router and it cannot be disassociated as well as the 4-way handshake cannot be captured.

(d) extra

When the PMF is set to "Capable" and all the devices are disconnected as well as re-connected to the wireless router, the 4-way handshake can be captured.

When the PMF is set to "Required" and Macbook Pro as well as Macbook Air are disconnected and re-connected to the wireless router, the 4-way handshake cannot be captured.

Conclusion

Purchase a wireless router that equipped with Protected Management Frames feature and set it to WPA2, AES and PMF to "Required" with wireless devices that compatible to PMF, such as macOS 10.13.4.

However, not all wireless routers and/or wireless devices are equipped with this feature even it is an expensive/high-end or commercial model.

Finally, when you find a wireless router that equipped with this feature, make sure to update the firmware to the latest version often.

By the way, I am unwilling to provide the brand name of the home wireless router that I tested. Sorry for that!

That's all! See you.

HOWTO : Wifi Intrusion Detection Without Tears

Wifi everywhere! When you are using wifi no matter it is a public or private hotspot, you are at the risk of being attacked.

When access point and client communicate, they will carrying out a four-way handshake in which the encrypted passphrase will also be transmitted between them. When attacker captures the four-way handshake, the encrypted passphrase is also captured in which it can get the passphrase by wordlists brute forcing.

However, we do not know the one who at the building or parking lot opposite your home or office is a hacker. Fortunately, we can inspect the suspicious or malicious packets in the air, it is the tool namely WAIDPS which stands for Wireless Auditing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System.

You can leave this tool running and it will report back if there is any suspicious activity in the air near you. You can even fight back to the attacker. However, in my opinion, it is too late for that as the attacker may already have your encrypted passphrase with the four-way handshake.

If you observe any attack such as deauthentication, you can reset your passphrase to a stronger one in order to stop the attack on your wifi router.

By the way, MAC address filtering and hidden SSID mean nothing to attacker. The best way to defense is to have a very strong passphrase.

Reference

[1] WAIDPS - Wireless Auditing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System
[2] Kali Linux

That's all! See you.

HOWTO : Wifi Penetration Testing Without Tears

Wifi everywhere! There are a lot of private and public wifi access points around you. Almost everyone will use wifi at anytime. The security of wifi should be taken into account.

The most common wifi frequencies are 2.4GHz and 5GHz at the time of this writing. 2.4GHz frequency channel range is between 1 and 14 while 5GHz frequency channel range is between 34 and 165. That's include a/b/g/n/ac modes.

You can even find some access points still using WEP but it is not common. Almost all access points are using WPA/WPA2. To get passphrase of WEP from access point is very easy. However, WPA/WPA2 is not very hard indeed.

When access point and client communicate, they will carrying out a four-way handshake in which the encrypted passhrase will also be transmitted between them. When attacker captures the four-way handshake, the encrypted passphrase is also captured in which it can get the passphrase by wordlists brute forcing.

To complete the capture steps, you need a tool namely Aircrack-ng. It is a very powerful wifi auditing tool. Furthermore, there is a good tool to brute forcing WPA/WPA2 key, it is Hashcat. Hashcat is very powerful tool for password recovery. Hashcat requires GPU to do the brute forcing job. The more powerful the GPU, the faster the process of brute forcing.

However, to carry out the wifi penetration testing is somehow very hard for some people. It is because it will involve a lot of steps and procedure to complete. In addition, you also need a workable wifi USB dongle or card to make the job done.

Current version of Aircrack-ng 1.2 RC4 does not fully compatible to 5GHz frequency. It is required to patch it and compile it yourself in Kali Linux.

Realtek 8812au chipset wifi USB dongle is ready for 5GHz frequency and penetration testing. The driver is required to compile and install on Kali Linux yourself too.

One of the automated tools for penetration testing wifi is WAIDPS. It also can act as intrusion detection and prevention system for wifi. It just a few keystrokes to complete the wifi penetration testing.





Reference

[1] List of WLAN channels
[2] Kali Linux
[3] Aircrack-ng Official Site
[4] WAIDPS - Wireless Auditing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System
[5] Install Realtek 8812au Linux Driver
[6] Patch Aircrack-ng For 5GHz Band On Kali Linux 2017.3
[7] Hashcat Official Site
[8] Install Hashcat on Ubuntu 16.04.3
[9] TP-Link Archer T4UHP (Realtek 8812au chipset)
[10] ALFA AWUS036NH (Realtek 8812au chipset)
[11] D-Link DWA-171 Nano USB Adapter (Realtek 8812au chipset)

That's all! See you.

WAIDPS - Wireless Auditing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System

WAIDPS - Wireless Auditing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System is an open source project which is designed for both offensive and defensive purpose in mind.

This project is original created by SY Chua of SYWorks Programming. However, it is no longer maintained by him since 2014. The GitHub version is v1.0 R.6 and it is dated Oct 10, 2014. However, the demo in his tutorials and Youtube videos are displayed v1.0 R.7 dated Oct 11, 2014.

This software is a very good design in screen layout and good operation experience. Since v1.0 R.6 will crash when handshake is captured and it is not working properly on Kali Linux 2017.2, I modified the Python script to make it to work again in two days. Meanwhile, IEEE 802.11ac is also supported in my modification.

It is well tested on Kali Linux 2017.2. Other penetration testing Linux distributions may work too.

My modification is also an open source project and it is released under GPLv3.





Reference

[1] This project is forked from https://github.com/SYWorks/waidps
[2] Official tutorial - Part 1
[3] Official tutorial - Part 2
[4] Official tutorial - Part 3
[5] Official Youtube Playlist
[6] RealTek 8812AU Driver Installation
[7] TP-Link Archer T4UHP (Realtek 8812AU chipset)

That's all! See you.