Update (6-27-07): I just found out that the makers of aircrack-ng just made this method easier. Two days after I wrote this article, they released a VMWare image of their entire suite of wireless penetration tools. So, instead of downloading and using the generic BackTrack ISO (step 1 and 5) head over to Aircrack-ng and obtain their version.

Update II (6-27-07): I guess packet injection under Windows is feasible after all! The same time the VMWare aircrack-ng image was released, they also revealed a new USB WiFi adaptor that lets you inject and read packets natively in Windows without the virtualization layer. What’s more, you can use the Wireshark GUI instead of the aircrack-ng command line. Personally, I would still go with the Alfa (read more below) since it has nantenna connector. But that’s just me! 🙂

“…crack a WEP enabled access point within a couple of minutes. 3 minutes to be exact.”

That Digg article piqued our curiosity in high school. My friend and I read about how the FBI publicly demonstrated a successful wireless network crack in a minuscule amount of time. Inspired, we obtained a laptop and searched around our neighborhood for WEP encrypted wireless networks. Our plan was to show these local folks how easy it was to acquire their WEP key. Then, we would convince them that we were good, hirable technicians who could upgrade their WiFi WEP encryption scheme to WPA. We spent literally three days practicing, trying to crack our own network with Windows tools. But in the end, our plan never materialized. Why? We were too “n00b” for Linux.

Crippled Windows Users

I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, “I hate being a Windows user.” I hold great respect for computer hackers who are quick to grasp other operating systems, like Linux and OS X, without a problem. But I, having been weaned on Windows since the day I touched a computer, have a hard time operating those unfamiliar user interfaces … or lack thereof. I mean, more than half of Linux is in the shell command line!

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As a hacker, I have to program my remote web server to automatically perform routine tasks for me. It’s a whole lot easier and cheaper to rely on my web hosting company to manage an always-on server. For starters, I don’t have to pay for the 24/7 electricity the on-call technician!

To make the server perform an automated task in a Linux or Unix environment, you need to schedule a cron job. I won’t go through all the details of setting it up in shell terminal since most people do not have remote shell access. You can read about the details more at the cron and crontab Wikipedia articles. Most of us deal with an interface on the cPanel that looks kind of like one of these two screens.

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In this never-ending quest for quality freeware to introduce to the freeware review, my dad asked me to find him something that did one specific thing. He needed a program that would compare the differences between two documents.

Take, for example, transcription. If you want to ensure the accuracy of a transcript, you can have two people transcribe the recording of a speech or interview to separate documents. Then, you run a program to compare the two. Maybe one transcriber heard “He hurt the baby” instead of “He burped the baby.” One word can make a world of difference!

Another example of using a comparison program is when you email your friend a document so that he or she can proofread it. Your friend edits the document and emails it back to you. Instead of going through the entire document line-by-line to see changes, you can just run the comparison program to point you to the changes.

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