Learning Kali Linux

Chapter 7. Wireless Security Testing

To paraphrase Irwin M. Fletcher, it’s all wireless today, fellas. It really is. Nearly all of my computers don’t have a way to connect a physical cable anymore. The 8-wire RJ45 jacks used for wired Ethernet are gone because the form factor of the jack was just too large to be accommodated in today’s narrow laptop designs. In the old, old days when we relied on PCMCIA cards for extending the capabilities of our laptops, cards had click-out connectors that could accept the Ethernet cables. The problem was that they were typically thin and easy to snap off. Desktop computers, of course, should you still have one, will generally have the RJ45 jack for your Ethernet cable, but increasingly even those have the ability to do Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) directly on the motherboard.

All of this is to say the future is in wireless in one form or another. Your car and your phone talk wirelessly. Your car may even talk to your home network wirelessly. Thermostats, door locks, televisions, light bulbs, toasters, refrigerators, Crock-Pots, you name it—versions of all of these products probably have wireless capability of some sort. This is why wireless testing is so important and why a fair number of tools will cover a range of wireless protocols. Over the course of this chapter, we will cover the wireless protocols that Kali Linux supports with testing tools.

The Scope of Wireless

The problem with the term wireless is that it covers too much ground. Not all ...