Wi-Fi WPA Cracking

This project was a bit of a tricky one that required significant preparation and a bit of a learning curve on how Linux kernels and WPAs work.

The goal of this project was to successfully perform a deauthentification attack on my personal network.

To begin with I decided to run the Kali Linux distribution through a virtual machine on a Windows OS laptop.

I used an ALFA AWUS036ACH Dual-Band Wi-Fi adapter to give the virtual machine a port for accessing network because the laptop’s internal network card didn’t support Linux.

Before I could start I had to set up the network adapter in the Z shell (the Linux distribution’s CLI).

I entered root and checked my Linux Standard Base release version (lsb_release -r) as well as my kernel and hardware architecture (uname -a). I then used “apt search linux-headers | grep headers” to search for all available Linux kernel headers packages in the APT repositories.

I found a version that would work better with my adapter and with the command line

“apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r | sed ‘s,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,’)”

This command allowed me to get the latest compatible headers without being tied to a specific kernel version.

I checked my network interfaces using iwconfig and ifconfig network commands to verify the current status of my virtual machine’s network.

Next, I downloaded a Linux driver online for USB Wi-Fi adapters that are based on the RTL8812AU Chipset and installed it.

Now that the adapter was set up I was finally able to start the test.

I used “airmon-ng check kill” to stop any interfering processes before enabling monitor mode with “airmon-ng start wlan0”.

Then “airodump-ng wlan0mon” to scan for APs and connected clients.

With “airodump-ng wlan0mon -c ## –bssid ##.##.##.##.##.##” I was then able to focus on my channel and target my PERSONAL AP.

Once I located my AP I performed a deauth attack to force a WPA handshake and run aircrack-ng on it.