Learn Ethical Hacking from Scratch

Network Penetration Testing - Gaining Access

So far in this book, we haven't needed to connect to a network for anything. In this chapter, as we take a step toward learning network penetration testing, we will connect to a network. This will allow us to launch more powerful attacks and get more accurate information. If a network doesn't use encryption (in other words, if it's an open wireless network), we can connect to it and sniff out unencrypted data. If a network is wired, we can still try to connect to it, perhaps through changing our MAC address. The main issue we might encounter is a network using encryption (such as WEP, WPA, or WPA2). If we do encounter encrypted data, we need to know the key to decrypt it, that's the main purpose ...