The WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) protocol is vulnerable to a brute force attack that allows an attacker to recover an access point’s WPS pin, and subsequently the WPA/WPA2 passphrase, in just a matter of hours, using the open source tool called Reaver. Think your 32 character alpha-numeric password is uncrackable? If your wireless router is using WPS then your router may be spit back your password in plain-text to the attacker in less than 10 hrs. WPS allows users to enter an 8 digit PIN to connect to a secured network without having to enter a passphrase. When a user supplies the correct PIN the access point essentially gives the user the WPA/WPA2 PSK that is needed to connect to the network. Reaver will determine an access point’s PIN and then extract the PSK and give it to the attacker. When we tested Reaver in our labs we were able to recovery the WPA password in 1.5hrs and the longest run was 7.5hrs

Ncrack is a high-speed network authentication cracking tool. It was built to help companies secure their networks by proactively testing all their hosts and networking devices for poor passwords. Security professionals also rely on Ncrack when auditing their clients. Ncrack was designed using a modular approach, a command-line syntax similar to Nmap and a dynamic engine that can adapt its behavior based on network feedback. It allows for rapid, yet reliable large-scale auditing of multiple hosts.
Ncrack’s features include a very flexible interface granting the user full control of network operations, allowing for very sophisticated bruteforcing attacks, timing templates for ease of use, runtime interaction similar to Nmap’s and many more.

Ncrack can now crack the Remote Desktop Protocol on all Windows versions from XP and above, with the introduction of the RDP module. Users are advised to read http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2010/q3/450 for cracking Windows XP machines since they can’t handle many concurrent RDP connections.

Download and more info: http://nmap.org/ncrack/

WPA Cracker is a WiFi security compromiser in the cloud, running on a high-performance cluster. Send them a dump of captured network traffic and $35, and they will try 136 million passwords in 40 minutes, tops (for $17, they’ll run the same attack at half speed) — the same crack would take five days on a “contemporary desktop PC.” They also have an extended, 284 million word dictionary that you can run for $55 in 40 minutes. They’ll also use the same process to crack the passwords on encrypted ZIP archives.

A backdoor vulnerability in a Time Warner cable modem and Wi-Fi router deployed to 65,000 customers would allow a hacker to remotely access the device’s administrative menu over the web, and potentially change the settings to intercept traffic, according to a blogger who discovered the issue.
David Chen, said he was trying to help a friend change the settings on his cable modem and discovered that Time Warner had hidden administrative functions from its customers with Javascript code. By disabling Javascript in his browser, he was able to see those functions, which included a tool to dump the router’s config file.

That file, it turned out, included the administrative login and password in cleartext. Chen investigated and found the same login and password could access the admin panels for every router in the SMC8014 series on Time Warner’s network , given that the routers also expose their web interfaces to the internet.

Src: chenosaurus.com

Lifehacker.com had an article the other day that pretty much held your hand on steps to crack a WEP password using BackTrack3. Check it out ::HERE::

ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. puts ATI and NVIDIA hardware to work accelerating the recovery of Wi-Fi passwords. The newly released Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor 1.0 benefits from the ability of
last-generation video cards manufactured by ATI and NVIDIA to munch numbers
faster, allowing its users to recover Wi-Fi passwords faster than ever before.
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We all know Norton can’t protect you , but also Norton is sometimes a pain in the ass to uninstall , sometimes it has files you cant remove etc. But even before you get to that point you’re prompted for an uninstall passowrd? wtf? sometimes you were the person who installed it sometimes you’re not either  way you don’t know the password. Here’s a simple way to bypass that problem.

The default password that should work for most of the Symantec uninstallation is “symantec“. Duh.

If the default password doesn’t work do this:
1) Go to Start -> Run and type regedit

2) Navigate to: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\INTEL\LANDesk\VirusProtect6\CurrentVersion\Administrator Only\Security\

3) Double click on the value name “UseVPUninstallPassword” and change the value from 1 to 0

4) Close the registry and retry the uninstall.

Security researchers say they’ve developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks.

The attack, described as the first practical attack on WPA, will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption, in order to read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could also be used to send bogus information to a client connected to the router.
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There are a couple of ways to get to this data, including simply using the Keychain Access utility, but probably the easiest way to get to this specific data is to go through Airport System Preferences. Go into the Airport control area of Mac OS X and you’ll find a list of all the different networks you’ve successfully joined in the past, including those with and without passwords.

Open up System Preferences –> Network –> Airport –> Configure…:

Pick the network you need and click on the little “EDIT” button and a new window pops up with specific information on this network:

Click on the “Show Password” checkbox, and ….

The password is shown in hex but dont worry it’ll still work when you paste it into your new WIFI profile if you choose to create one.

I’ll admit it:  Sometimes I’m lazy and sometimes I hedge my bets a little.  I didn’t have the time on Friday to look deeper into the real time requirements to hack a WPA password using Elcomsoft’s new tools.  I knew the time needed was considerable, but I didn’t realize exactly how long it’d take:  George Ou says it’d take 5793 years to crack a WPA password normally and even with a heftier computer than most of us will ever see, it’ll still take almost 6 years to break the key.  And Robert Graham backs him up, saying all it takes is lengthening your key by one character.

I’d overestimated how much of an impact this could make on the security of a wireless network.  I thought Elcomsoft might have come up with a viable attack against WPA, but in reality, this is just a marketing gimmick.  No one’s going to devote 5+ years of computing power to hack a wireless network; first of all the information will probably be obsolete in that time frame, second, no one’s going to keep the same wireless network equipment and passwords for five years.  At least I hope they won’t.

There are any number of easier, quicker ways to break into a network than trying to brute force the WPA passphrase, everything from social engineering to just breaking in and stealing the servers.  Cracking the WPA will probably become easier as time goes by, but for now WPA is still a viable way to secure your wireless.  Unless you’re doing something stupid like using dictionary words in your passphrase.

Via: mckeay.net