Before we get into the rest of the article, we want to thank Robert Graham, founder and CEO of Errata Security, for showing us the “sidejacking” a... Vote what is cool!

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Wirelessly hacking Gmail and more - tutorial

Posted by gadget 217 days ago (http://www.tgdaily.com)
Category: Technology | Tags: hacking gmail sidejacking wifi black

Before we get into the rest of the article, we want to thank Robert Graham, founder and CEO of Errata Security, for showing us the “sidejacking” attack at this year’s BlackHat computer security convention. His sidejacking term referred to the way his two programs, “Ferret” and “Hamster”, are used in sniffing and replaying cookies. The freely downloadable programs don’t directly attack passwords or computers to access webpages and emails, rather they compromise the wireless network itself. You can read Graham’s sidejacking blog post here.

As with any hacking tutorial, some people will undoubtedly say we are facilitating illegal activity, but we think the benefit gained from this article will far outweigh any malicious use. The vast majority of people know that open wireless networks are dangerous, but no one has ever given them an “in your face” demonstration. It’s quite a sobering experience to see how easily your search terms and Google emails can be capture and we hope this article will spur businesses and home owners to secure their networks.

Also, these types of attacks on wireless networks have been going on for years because there have been automated sniffer tools available. Graham’s ferret and hamster tool basically do the same thing, but in a much more user friendly way.

Of course, our wonderful lawyers would like us to say that attacking someone else's laptop, without their permission,would be illegal. Therefore in this tutorial, you'll be sniffing traffic from a "victim" laptop that either you or a consenting friend or coworker own.

Attack Overview

The victim laptop will connect to the wireless network and surf the web like usual. The attacker will first need to scan for available networks with Kismet and then set his capture card to the same wi-fi channel as the target network. For the purposes of the tutorial, we are assuming that the attacker doesn’t know any information about the wireless network.
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