How to Sniff Your Wireless Network
Imagine This
A hacker jumps on your wireless network and can see the information that
is being sent from your computer, such as credit card payments and
e-mail passwords, into the “cloud.” This hack allows you to monitor your
own wireless network activity through a piece of software.
How it's Done
Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer or packet-capture utility, and
while typically used to troubleshoot network issues, it can be also be
used as a packet sniffer. Packet sniffers allow you to access any live
network stream over a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection.
Perform this HackGo to
www.wireshark.org
and download the latest version of Wireshark for Windows. Run the setup
program when the download is complete. The program will present you
with a list of default settings; select them all, and click Next.
Install WinPcap when prompted.
After the
installation is complete, run Wireshark from your desktop. Be sure you
are connected to the wireless network you wish to monitor. Go to the
Capture menu and select the wireless interface from the list
You will now
start to see packets scrolling down your screen. Test it yourself. With
Wireshark still running, open a Web browser and visit your favorite Web
site. On our test we visited Chase bank’s Web site, and we saw the URL
pop up in the system monitoring. Wireshark will log all of your
Web-browsing activity, searched DNS names, and anything else that isn’t
encrypted.
Not all wireless drivers and hardware supports packet
capture, so there’s a chance yours won’t work. But that won’t stop an
attacker, who has made sure his machine works just fine for that.
Prevent this Hack
Karen Hanley, senior director of marketing and membership for the Wi-Fi
Alliance, suggests changing the SSID of your network to something other
than the router name, so you won’t be tricked by a hacker who might have
re-created a connection with a similar name. Also, if your router
supports it, make sure you enable WPA2 encryption. Any encryption is
better than none, but WPA2 is best because its AES-encryption algorithm
is government grade and considered fully secure. That’s why it hasn’t
been widely broken.