It's not a bad idea to leave the traffic capture running. The additional data will assist in confirming the key is correct later on.
Some wireless drivers ignore directed deauthentication and only respond to broadcast deauthentication. We can run the same aireplay-ng deauthentication command without the -c parameter.
If 802.11w is in use, unencrypted deauthentication frames are ignored. The only course of action is to wait for a client to connect.
Using aircrack-ng against our recently created capture file, wpa-01.cap, specifying the path to our wordlist, the ESSID, and the BSSID:
kali@kali:~$ aircrack-ng -w /usr/share/john/password.lst -e wifu -b 34:08:04:09:3D:38 wpa-01.cap
Aircrack-ng 1.5.2
[00:00:00] 3424/3559 keys tested (3516.42 k/s)
Time left: 0 seconds 100.00%
KEY FOUND! [ 12345678 ]
Master Key : 27 A6 FB B3 FA 30 4C CD EE E5 8E 88 36 D0 CC 6D
A8 0D AB FE 06 D7 68 DF A1 0B 9F C7 30 03 4F 47
Transient Key : 8F C7 EF EF EF EF EF EF 60 1D EC 08 B7 4A 22 71
42 A1 A1 35 F2 76 DB C0 A4 42 06 15 5F E0 46 4D
E9 10 2F CD 51 22 CE 2E 77 CF 5E 69 DB E4 7C C5
FA 72 9A 45 25 D4 D6 53 8B 05 35 2D 24 01 C9 B6
EAPOL HMAC : AB D2 9E 97 66 C7 A6 77 7E 63 43 73 CC 73 9A 37
Without both -e and -b parameters, aircrack-ng normally prompts to choose a network to crack. In this case, since there is only one network, aircrack-ng automatically chooses our target.
Confirming our key is correct by decrypting the traffic with airdecap-ng:
kali@kali:~$ airdecap-ng -b 34:08:04:09:3D:38 -e wifu -p 12345678 wpa-01.cap
Total number of stations seen 1
Total number of packets read 393
Total number of WEP data packets 0
Total number of WPA data packets 125
Number of plaintext data packets 0
Number of decrypted WEP packets 0
Number of corrupted WEP packets 0
Number of decrypted WPA packets 37
Number of bad TKIP (WPA) packets 0
Number of bad CCMP (WPA) packets 0
We could have also used Wireshark, adding the passphrase for decryption.
Custom Wordlists with Aircrack-ng
Using Aircrack-ng with John the Ripper
Just describing JtR.
Editing John the Ripper Rules
JtR mangling rules are located in /etc/john/john.conf.
Testing our rules by running JtR in wordlist mode and sending stdout as input to grep:
kali@kali:~$ john --wordlist=/usr/share/john/password.lst --rules --stdout | grep -i Password123
Press 'q' or Ctrl-C to abort, almost any other key for status
password123
password123
Password123
PASSWORD123
password1230
password1231
...
password1239
4056131p 0:00:00:00 100.00% (2018-01-10 10:00) 5481Kp/s sss999
Using Aircrack-ng with JTR
Piping JtR into aircrack-ng:
kali@kali:~$ john --wordlist=/usr/share/john/password.lst --rules --stdout | aircrack-ng -e wifu -w - ~/wpa-01.cap `
...
Aircrack-ng 1.5.2
[00:01:21] 713471 keys tested (8789.92 k/s)
KEY FOUND! [ Password123 ]
Master Key : 57 7D EF 0B 09 FF 92 92 3F 15 52 E8 48 D8 26 6D
EB 10 8A 15 B5 F0 62 14 4F 88 C1 78 FB D4 52 04
Transient Key : 45 21 28 85 40 69 58 29 77 6E B0 BC D2 D2 FC AA
C5 5A 08 C9 B1 58 50 42 DC AD B8 54 95 1E 51 E9
44 15 81 28 67 E9 28 02 0E 29 43 5E 31 C2 23 C0
0A 1F 46 DB A4 93 52 5B 2E 7E 57 09 BC 2B 0B 13
EAPOL HMAC : 19 7B 5B D1 32 73 82 69 98 56 06 BA 9B D2 B4 9B
Using Arcrack-ng with Crunch
Crunch is an easy-to-use password generator and can interact with aircrack-ng in the same was as JtR did. It only requires specifying the first two parameters, the minimum and maximum length of the password:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 8 9
Crunch will now generate the following amount of data: 56174480370944 bytes
53572159 MB
52316 GB
51 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 5638330743552
aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaab
aaaaaaac
aaaaaaad
aaaaaaae
aaaaaaaf
aaaaaaag
aaaaaaah
aaaaaaai
aaaaaaaj
...
Limiting Crunch's generation to certain characters:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 8 9 abc123
Crunch will now generate the following amount of data: 115893504 bytes
110 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 11757312
aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaab
aaaaaaac
aaaaaaa1
aaaaaaa2
aaaaaaa3
aaaaaaba
aaaaaabb
aaaaaabc
aaaaaab1
...
Crunch also allows us to specify a pattern with the -t option with or without a character set. Different symbols in the pattern define the type of character to use.
@ represents lowercase characters or characters from a defined set
, represents uppercase characters
% represent numbers
^ represents symbols
Generating a wordlist to crack our WPA 4-way handshake:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 11 11 -t password%%%
Crunch will now generate the following amount of data: 12000 bytes
0 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 1000
password000
password001
password002
password003
...
password999
Another way to generate it using specified characters:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 11 11 0123456789 -t password@@@
Crunch will now generate the following amount of data: 12000 bytes
0 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 1000
password000
password001
password002
password003
...
password999
Using the -p option to generate unique words from a character set. Min/maximum length still required but is ignored, hence the 1 1:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 1 1 -p abcde12345
Crunch will now generate approximately the following amount of data: 39916800 bytes
38 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 3628800
12345abcde
12345abced
12345abdce
12345abdec
12345abecd
12345abedc
12345acbde
12345acbed
12345acdbe
12345acdeb
...
edcba54321
Generating a list of unique words from multiple values:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 1 1 -p dog cat bird
Crunch will now generate approximately the following amount of data: 66 bytes
0 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 6
birdcatdog
birddogcat
catbirddog
catdogbird
dogbirdcat
dogcatbird
Refining our wordlist more with -t and -p:
kali@kali:~$ crunch 5 5 -t ddd%% -p dog cat bird
Crunch will now generate approximately the following amount of data: 7800 bytes
0 MB
0 GB
0 TB
0 PB
Crunch will now generate the following number of lines: 600
birdcatdog00
birdcatdog01
birdcatdog02
birdcatdog03
birdcatdog04
birdcatdog05
birdcatdog06
birdcatdog07
birdcatdog08
birdcatdog09
...
Because there's very little value in storing all these generated passwords on disk, we can pipe it directly into aircrack-ng:
RSMangler is a Ruby script that takes words as input and modifies them in multiple ways.
Using RSMangler with a wordlist, sending to aircrack-ng:
kali@kali:~$ rsmangler --file wordlist.txt --min 12 --max 13 | aircrack-ng -e wifu rsmangler-01.cap -w -
...
Aircrack-ng 1.5.2
[00:00:02] 128 keys tested (48.74 k/s)
KEY FOUND! [ 41birdcatdog ]
Master Key : CE BD A8 BD 43 39 5B 4E 1E 7E 2B A6 77 F0 3D 85
20 7E E2 AF 6E 9C 9C A2 1D F2 33 B7 9E C2 A1 A8
Transient Key : B8 7D A9 6F EA BD 4C 52 3F 57 09 8A C5 37 F1 41
87 B6 B7 87 21 D1 82 63 1F 9A B7 41 E2 AD 22 08
7A 6B F2 D4 19 26 66 09 D2 BB F4 AB 89 26 AA 5D
E7 E5 9E 85 30 80 1B A8 4A 14 BD 73 82 7E D3 0F
EAPOL HMAC : 58 CD C7 9E 0E 45 66 05 5B E1 0C 10 93 D7 65 2C
Hashcat
OpenCL for GPUs
GPU go brrrrr.
Device Properties
Using hashcat to display device information:
kali@kali:~$ hashcat -I
hashcat (v6.2.6) starting in backend information mode
OpenCL Info:
============
OpenCL Platform ID #1
Vendor..: The pocl project
Name....: Portable Computing Language
Version.: OpenCL 3.0 PoCL 6.0+debian Linux, None+Asserts, RELOC, LLVM 17.0.6, SLEEF, DISTRO, POCL_DEBUG
Backend Device ID #1
Type...........: CPU
Vendor.ID......: 128
Vendor.........: GenuineIntel
Name...........: cpu-haswell-Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9980HK CPU @ 2.40GHz
Version........: OpenCL 3.0 PoCL HSTR: cpu-x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-haswell
Processor(s)...: 4
Clock..........: 2400
Memory.Total...: 18931 MB (limited to 4096 MB allocatable in one block)
Memory.Free....: 9433 MB
Local.Memory...: 256 KB
OpenCL.Version.: OpenCL C 1.2 PoCL
Driver.Version.: 6.0+debian
It is not recommended to use hashcat for cracking when only the portable OpenCL is available, as it is very slow. Use aircrack-ng instead. Portable OpenCL is 4 to 15 times slower than aircrack-ng depending on the CPU used. On the other hand, the Intel OpenCL has similar speed compared to aircrack-ng.
We do not recommend running hashcat with a device using the portable OpenCL (pocl), as it is known to be buggy. Although hashcat may list the portable OpenCL in the devices list, it will skip it when other OpenCL runtimes are available.
Hashcat Benchmark
Hashcat provides a benchmarking option with -b. Benchmarking with the 2500 hash mode:
kali@kali:/~$ hashcat -b -m 2500
hashcat (v6.2.6) starting in benchmark mode
Benchmarking uses hand-optimized kernel code by default.
You can use it in your cracking session by setting the -O option.
Note: Using optimized kernel code limits the maximum supported password length.
To disable the optimized kernel code in benchmark mode, use the -w option.
OpenCL API (OpenCL 3.0 PoCL 6.0+debian Linux, None+Asserts, RELOC, LLVM 17.0.6, SLEEF, DISTRO, POCL_DEBUG) - Platform #1 [The pocl project]
============================================================================================================================================
* Device #1: cpu-haswell-Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9980HK CPU @ 2.40GHz, 9433/18931 MB (4096 MB allocatable), 4MCU
Benchmark relevant options:
===========================
* --optimized-kernel-enable
The plugin 2500 is deprecated and was replaced with plugin 22000. For more details, please read: https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-10253.html
------------------------------------------------------
* Hash-Mode 2500 (WPA-EAPOL-PBKDF2) [Iterations: 4095]
------------------------------------------------------
Speed.#1.........: 14332 H/s (70.79ms) @ Accel:1024 Loops:1024 Thr:1 Vec:8
Started: Sun Jul 21 12:24:09 2024
Stopped: Sun Jul 21 12:24:11 2024
...
Benchmarking with the 22000 hash mode:
kali@kali:~$ hashcat -b -m 22000
hashcat (v6.2.6) starting in benchmark mode
Benchmarking uses hand-optimized kernel code by default.
You can use it in your cracking session by setting the -O option.
Note: Using optimized kernel code limits the maximum supported password length.
To disable the optimized kernel code in benchmark mode, use the -w option.
OpenCL API (OpenCL 3.0 PoCL 6.0+debian Linux, None+Asserts, RELOC, LLVM 17.0.6, SLEEF, DISTRO, POCL_DEBUG) - Platform #1 [The pocl project]
============================================================================================================================================
* Device #1: cpu-haswell-Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9980HK CPU @ 2.40GHz, 9433/18931 MB (4096 MB allocatable), 4MCU
Benchmark relevant options:
===========================
* --optimized-kernel-enable
-------------------------------------------------------------
* Hash-Mode 22000 (WPA-PBKDF2-PMKID+EAPOL) [Iterations: 4095]
-------------------------------------------------------------
Speed.#1.........: 14251 H/s (71.00ms) @ Accel:1024 Loops:1024 Thr:1 Vec:8
Started: Sun Jul 21 12:24:25 2024
Stopped: Sun Jul 21 12:24:27 2024
Hashcat Utilities
Hashcat provies more than two dozen small utilities useful for password cracking. They're not installed by default but are available through the hashcat-utils package.
After install, these can be found at /usr/lib/hashcat-utils. One specifically relevant for our purposes is cap2hccapx. This exports WPA handshakes from PCAP files to HCCAPx, a format used by the 2500 hash mode in hashcat for WPA/WPA2 handshakes.
aircrack-ng can also use .hccapx files as input for cracking.
Passphrase Cracking with Hashcat
Using the WPA hash mode, we will crack the file generated by cap2hccapx with the JtR default wordlist. Hash mode 2500 is depcrecated, thus we must use --deprecated-check-disable:
The reason that we can not use cap2hccapx with the 22000 hash mode is that when we used cap2hccapx.bin to create our output.hccapx file, it creates a binary format file. This binary format does not work with the new 22000 hash mode.
To use the 22000 mode we need to convert our wifi-01.cap file to the correct format. There are two ways to do this. The first method is to take our file and upload it to https://hashcat.net/cat2hashcat.
The second method is to use the application hcxtools.
Using Hcxpcapngtool to convert the file:
kali@kali:~$ hcxpcapngtool -o hash.hc22000 wifu-01.cap
hcxpcapngtool 6.2.7 reading from wifu-01.cap...
summary capture file
--------------------
file name................................: wifu-01.cap
version (pcap/cap).......................: 2.4 (very basic format without any additional information)
timestamp minimum (GMT)..................: 20.07.2024 23:30:17
timestamp maximum (GMT)..................: 20.07.2024 23:30:48
used capture interfaces..................: 1
link layer header type...................: DLT_IEEE802_11 (105) very basic format without any additional information about the quality
endianness (capture system)...............: little endian
packets inside...........................: 385
ESSID (total unique).....................: 3
BEACON (total)...........................: 1
BEACON on 2.4 GHz channel (from IE_TAG)..: 3
ACTION (total)...........................: 5
PROBEREQUEST.............................: 75
PROBERESPONSE (total)....................: 63
AUTHENTICATION (total)...................: 2
AUTHENTICATION (OPEN SYSTEM).............: 2
ASSOCIATIONREQUEST (total)...............: 1
ASSOCIATIONREQUEST (PSK).................: 1
WPA encrypted............................: 18
EAPOL messages (total)...................: 5
EAPOL WPA messages.......................: 5
EAPOLTIME gap (measured maximum usec)....: 5266
EAPOL ANONCE error corrections (NC)......: not detected
EAPOL M1 messages (total)................: 2
EAPOL M2 messages (total)................: 1
EAPOL M3 messages (total)................: 1
EAPOL M4 messages (total)................: 1
EAPOL pairs (total)......................: 3
EAPOL pairs (best).......................: 1
EAPOL pairs written to 22000 hash file...: 1 (RC checked)
EAPOL M32E2 (authorized).................: 1
...
session summary
---------------
processed cap files...................: 1
A potfile is created with our cracked passphrases (unless we specify --potfile-disable) which is located at ~/.hashcat/hashcat.potfile. A different path can be specified with --potfile-path.
Airolib-ng
Using Airolib-ng
To use airolib-ng, we first need a text file containing the ESSID of our target AP:
kali@kali:~$ echo wifu > essid.txt
Next, we import this file into the airolib-ng database:
kali@kali:~$ airolib-ng wifu.sqlite --import essid essid.txt
Database <wifu.sqlite> does not already exist, creating it...
Database <wifu.sqlite> successfully created
Reading file...
Writing...
Done.
Ignored entries are because WPA passwords are between 8 and 63 characters long.
Make airolib-ng batch process all the PMKs:
kali@kali:~$ airolib-ng wifu.sqlite --batch
Computed 501 PMK in 2 seconds (250 PMK/s, 0 in buffer). All ESSID processed.
kali@kali:~$ airolib-ng wifu.sqlite --stats
There are 1 ESSIDs and 501 passwords in the database. 501 out of 501 possible combinations have been computed (100%).
ESSID Priority Done
wifu 64 100.0
Rather than using a wordlist with aircrack-ng, we can choose to pass our database:
kali@kali:~$ aircrack-ng -r wifu.sqlite wpa1-01.cap
Aircrack-ng 1.6
[00:00:00] 16 keys tested (23633.68 k/s)
KEY FOUND! [ password ]
Master Key : 68 72 39 CD 26 DA 6B 12 64 37 1E AB A5 9F E5 7F
29 DE 33 75 0A 12 4C E0 F7 D4 2E 00 4C 51 FB 56
Transient Key : 2F 07 B7 3D 1E D3 AB 73 69 3F 39 99 11 8A 00 4F
C8 29 67 AA 46 35 EF 99 E9 B1 A5 41 DC 29 07 A0
66 EC 9D D8 D5 96 65 D6 DE E4 97 30 9B D7 B8 FC
6F 35 48 82 42 3B EC 11 7A 13 E4 CF 5C 08 4A DB
EAPOL HMAC : 8E 86 F5 EB F6 2A 2A 47 0B 66 9B C7 8A E2 9F 63
As shown, using PMKs go much quicker than trying to crack the PSK.
coWPAtty
Rainbow Table Mode
The main purpose of coWPAtty is to use pre-computed hashes, similar to airolib-ng.
An important point to keep in mind when using pre-computed hashes is that they need to be generated for each unique ESSID. The ESSID is combined with the WPA pre-shared key to create the hash. This means that the hashes for the ESSID of "wifu" will not be the same as those for "linksys" or "dlink".
Creating pre-computed hash tables using genpmk:
# -d outputs toa file
# -s specifies the ESSID
# -f defines our wordlist
kali@kali:~$ genpmk -f /usr/share/john/password.lst -d wifuhashes -s wifu
genpmk 1.1 - WPA-PSK precomputation attack. <jwright@hasborg.com>
File wifuhashes does not exist, creating.
503 passphrases tested in 1.17 seconds: 429.25 passphrases/second
Using pre-computed hashtables with coWPAtty:
kali@kali:~$ cowpatty -r wpajohn-01.cap -d wifuhashes -s wifu
cowpatty 4.6 - WPA-PSK dictionary attack. <jwright@hasborg.com>
Collected all necessary data to mount crack against WPA2/PSK passphrase.
Starting dictionary attack. Please be patient.
The PSK is "Password123".
503 passphrases tested in 0.00 seconds: 30391.61 passphrases/second
