Reverse engineering a wireless signal?

[DerpyTurtle]

I was wondering if anyone had found a way to reverse engineer a wireless adapter to scramble the signal so nobody could see your network or see what you are up to. If so, is there any specific adapter that seems to work best?

[Kulverstukas]

I believe you don't need to reverse engineer anything. Wireless can be hidden with settings in your router. More precisely the SSID would be hidden.

Now you said "wireless adapter" to create a network? Well "wireless adapter" AFAIK is for connecting to the network, is it no? unless you want to create an Ad-Hoc network, which you should have mentioned. In that case you can also hide the SSID within settings.

Maybe RBA could extend on this some more

[WirelessDesert]

As I know it, I think that all hidden networks are visible if you know what to do.This is if they are in the same spektrum ofc. Hiding it in the regular settings will just make it nameless and also (I think), set a boolean to true. But idk really.

But I've been able to connect to hidden networks I didn't know about with my iPod.

[proxx]

I believe you don't need to reverse engineer anything. Wireless can be hidden with settings in your router. More precisely the SSID would be hidden.

Now you said "wireless adapter" to create a network? Well "wireless adapter" AFAIK is for connecting to the network, is it no? unless you want to create an Ad-Hoc network, which you should have mentioned. In that case you can also hide the SSID within settings.

Maybe RBA could extend on this some more

Hiding SSID's is a complete joke.
There is nothing hidden about it.
During association the SSID is needed because its used in the hash along with passphrase,MAC address and a couple other things.
In the case of WPA and WPA2 at least.

In fact one could send a deauth to the client which forces it to reconnect , sniffing that traffic will give you the SSID.
If it doesnt use encryption at all the traffic can be sniffed in plain text.

[Snayler]

^^ What proxx said. Hiding SSID and MAC filtering are 2 security measures that are way easy to bypass. In wireless, one of the best ways of hiding a signal is using channel 14. It is only used on Japan, AFAIK, and no American/European device should be able to pick it up without tweaking the default settings. But using those frequencies is illegal, so use it at your own risk.

On linux:

Code: [Select]

iw reg set JPto enable channel 14.

[Axon]

Hiding your ssid isn't efficient as you might think, best way to protect your network from bieng hacked is to use a very strong password.

[Daemon]

Hiding your ssid isn't efficient as you might think, best way to protect your network from bieng hacked is to use a very strong password.

Very true, as using  a tool like Kismet with a wifi card that supports injection will find even the networks that aren't broadcasting their SSID. Disabling that might get rid of skiddies attacking it, but it's security through obscurity which is obscure in its effect at best (horrible, i know )

As for RE a signal...like kulverstukas said you don't have to RE anything if it's being broadcasted in cleartext, in that case anyone listening will see any and everything that goes over it. So to counterbalance that, we use encryption to make it so that people can't (easily anyways) read whats contained in those packets, though encryption can be broken. Like Axon said, the best protection is a very strong password. Though another part of good security is adjusting the strength of your router and its location/placement so that it doesn't broadcast past the walls of your house/business or perhaps the yard if you want it there. This means attackers would have to get physically close enough to access it (or a damn good antennae) which will deter even more of them. Combine this with a strong password (think 16+ chars, 32 is a good number) and WPA2 as your encryption scheme, and you'll be doing very good for security bro. GL

[Stackprotector]

Very true, as using  a tool like Kismet with a wifi card that supports injection will find even the networks that aren't broadcasting their SSID. Disabling that might get rid of skiddies attacking it, but it's security through obscurity which is obscure in its effect at best (horrible, i know )

As for RE a signal...like kulverstukas said you don't have to RE anything if it's being broadcasted in cleartext, in that case anyone listening will see any and everything that goes over it. So to counterbalance that, we use encryption to make it so that people can't (easily anyways) read whats contained in those packets, though encryption can be broken. Like Axon said, the best protection is a very strong password. Though another part of good security is adjusting the strength of your router and its location/placement so that it doesn't broadcast past the walls of your house/business or perhaps the yard if you want it there. This means attackers would have to get physically close enough to access it (or a damn good antennae) which will deter even more of them. Combine this with a strong password (think 16+ chars, 32 is a good number) and WPA2 as your encryption scheme, and you'll be doing very good for security bro. GL

Also get rid of WPS systems. And instead take for example a good passphrase if you don't want to hassle with stupid long passwords for your friends and family.