Password Cracking

Dear readers!

In this sunny July we would like to present you the new issue of Hakin9, this time titled Password Cracking. The hands-on tutorials will help you explore new techniques and ways to gain access.

As always, we are extremely grateful for everyone who made this issue possible. From authors, bringing you content, through reviewers, to proofreaders - we appreciate your work and your contributions. We could not do this without you, so let us say “thank you” again.

We start the issue with  Attacking Passwords with Kali Linux. Kevin Vaccaro prepared an amazing article about main tools from Kali Linux designed to attack passwords. With his tutorial you will learn all the important command lines. If never had a chance to use hashcat, Cyrille Aubergier has written about two password attack methods - dictionary and non-dictionary brute force. Saad Faruque will teach you how to crack passwords with Hydra. Want more? Check the article about John the Ripper prepared by Zakaria Brahimi and uncover its power.

For those of you that are not interested in password cracking, we prepared other interesting articles. Ever heard about wireless attack called Evil AP? Fabrício Salomão and Rafael Capucho have written a whole tutorial about it, you don’t want to miss it. We three articles about opensource tools: GrayLog, SigPloit and Keyboards Walks. If you want to learn more about them, don’t skip it! At the end of the issue you will find articles about building an anti-fraud system based on SIEM Solution by Ahmed Samara and Wifi mischief using Wireshark by Moisés Rogério Fernandes.

Don’t forget to read the rest of the articles, because each of them can show you something new! We appreciate your feedback at all times, so if you have any comments or suggestions, do let us know.

Enjoy!

Hakin9 Magazine

Editorial Team

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>> Table of Contents <<

Attacking passwords with Kali Linux 

by Kevin Vaccaro

Kali Linux has several tools that can be used when attempting to attack passwords. Depending on the type of attack you wish to perform, there are different tools to fit the need. In this article, we will cover how passwords are stored, the methodology to attack a password, and finally the tools that can be used.

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The Biggest Boogeyman of Network Wireless
by Fabrício Salomão and Rafael Capucho

In the current scenario of cyber attacks, the attacks performed in wireless networks are one of the most aimed at, due to the high rate of WiFi devices in various places. A great number of attacks based on WiFi networks gain fame in this environment, but the attack that really stands out is Evil AP. The attack is performed mainly in public places, such as malls, snack bars or coffee shops. They happen to be the perfect spot for the attack, considering the number of people that circulate through these places, compromising several users who use the internet to access their financial transactions or personal information, such as their social networks. With the same attack scenario, corporations, which are seen as targets by attackers who wish to steal information (industrial espionage), are affected.

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Flash Application Penetration testing
by Mahmoud Abdelmonem

In a modern/smart world, everything literally can be tested against various types of attacks to make sure that the application is secure. Basic knowledge about application behavior before we start could be divided into four main categories as shown below: 1. Application protocols understanding. 2. Knowledge of intercepting application traffic regardless of its type. 3. Target attack vectors. 4. How to penetrate and exploit the discovered vulnerabilities?

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SigPloit: Your Way through the “Telecom Backyard”
by Loay Abdelrazek

For the past few years, researchers have been highlighting the risks and vulnerabilities in the signaling protocols that are used by mobile networks to facilitate the second to second operations, whether it was mobility, voice, SMS , charging, etc. Those vulnerabilities have widened our view regarding the mobile security domain to include not only the mobile application or the user side but to be extended to the infrastructure of the operator itself. Inspired by the research done and still in progress in this field, came the idea to initiate a penetration testing framework dedicated to signaling exploitation. The main aim was to release it as an open source tool to help mobile operators to educate themselves more and be able to conduct their own testing.

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Attacking passwords with Kali Linux - Hashcat
by Cyrille Aubergier

Cracking passwords is the action to find a password associated with an account. This can be done by guessing it doing repetitive tests on the web application. Or if you have the password hashes, you can generate the hash of each password you guessing and compare it. In both cases, this will take time. This duration is directly related to the amount of passwords you want to test. In fact, this is the way to evaluate a cryptographic algorithm: the time to generate hashes. There are no perfect cryptographic algorithms, like there are no unbreakable passwords, this is just a question of time. And whatever the method and strategy, the number of passwords you want to test is important. Depending on the target types and protection mechanisms in place, you must adjust your strategy.

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Centralization and management logs with GrayLog
by Braier Alves

Graylog is a system that aims to centralize and catalog logs and make it easier to audit and identify various events on a corporate network, performing the consolidation, analysis and information management. By owning a mailslot and manager alerts, it makes the management much more robust than a simple log server. Through Graylog-Web, you can create and manage events by user, making it easier to determine the possible location of a particular event. The Graylog then becomes extremely useful for both sysadmins and developers.

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Cracking passwords with John The Ripper
by Brahimi Zakaria

Often, in computer science, you have to choose a password to secure something or to identify yourself. From this point, the headache begins to find one password that you will remember and that is complicated enough to be secure at the same time. This is where the tools for generating passwords come in. These tools are fully parameterizable and produce completely random passwords which makes them more difficult against cracking attempts.

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Password cracking: pentesting with Hydra
by Saad Faruque

In this article, we shall cover the weakness of single factor authentication system, how to check for vulnerability, and perform a pentest active online attack (over network) using wordlist/dictionary file. We shall also help you understand how to design policies, standards, controls, etc., that can withstand such attack.

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Keyboard walks
by Mikhail Kasyanov

Nobody likes passwords. They are like a bunch of keys: tear a pocket, kick one's leg and spoil the life of a good user. However, they protect from intruders and is still an essential part of security baselines. In the enterprise, dislike for passwords is elevated to absolute through information security policies: you can not choose less heavy keys, you can not use the same key for different doors and further, once you start getting used to this awkward bunch of keys, they ask you to change it to a new even more uncomfortable key. The real hell.

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Wifi mischief using Wireshark
by Moisés Rogério Fernandes

Wireshark is the most popular tool for monitoring the network, and in the some cases it is very useful to sniff to capture some logins and passwords.

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Building Anti-Fraud system based on SIEM Solution
by Ahmed Samara

During my professional career, I’ve dealt with various types of fraud, like online banking fraud, ATM fraud, money laundering, call-center fraud, banking internal fraud using different techniques to achieve their goal, which is gaining money, and multiple solutions have been developed to provide the required defense against each type. So let’s discuss anti-fraud solutions.