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I want to know if you really do know my Facebook password, but I also don’t want you to just say “Your Facebook password is cooldude69” because everyone else at the party is listening. I nervously glance up at you and say “Really?”. It’s kinda like if you came up to me at a party and you said “I know your Facebook password”. Anyone within range can hear what you’re saying.
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Wi-Fi is broadcast as radio waves out of your device and router all the time. The trouble is, everyone else can hear you. And the Wi-Fi needs to prove to you that it knows the password. But you need to prove to the Wi-Fi that you know the password. Let’s say you’re a legitimate businessperson just connecting to your home Wi-Fi. You might be wondering why there’s a secret handshake happening every time you connect to Wi-Fi, and that’s fair enough, I’m glad you asked. We’re going to find the hash by watching……the secret handshake. Kinda like how you can’t unscramble scrambled eggs back into the white and the yolk. The router won’t tell you the Wi-Fi password, but it will give up the password hash 1.Ī password hash is like a scrambled version of the password. Once you know the BSSID of your neighbour’s Wi-Fi, the goal is to get the Wi-Fi password. You see the names of nearby Wi-Fi networks and also their “BSSID”, which is a bit like an ID for Wi-Fi networks. The first thing you’d do is take out your laptop and run airodump-ng, a tool for precisely the job of hacking Wi-Fi. You don’t know the password, but you want to connect. So in our 99.99999% theoretical scenario, you and your laptop are within range of your neighbour’s Wi-Fi router. If you want to actually hack some Wi-Fi, try disconnecting and doing this to your own Wi-Fi. This idea is a bad one, in the same way that trying to break into your neighbour’s house is a bad idea. You might be having what seems like a genius idea, and that’s “wowee I should hack my neighbour’s wifi because uhhhhhh”. I’m using “your neighbour” as an easy-to-remember example here. Isn’t is strange how when you move into a place and get an internet connection, you typically get given a home router as part of the package? Isn’t it strange how this router is held together using nothing but matchsticks, broken promises, and man’s hubris?ĭid you know that anyone nearby can kick you off a Wi-Fi network?ĭid you know your phone constantly broadcasts the names and locations (by proxy) of every Wi-Fi network you’ve ever connected to?īelow are the steps for breaking it more. By the end it’s okay to feel afraid, insecure, or even the urge to bulk-purchase home networking equipment.
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This article is your 100% lactose-free guide to hacking home Wi-Fi.
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