Hot Sales In China For Wi-Fi Key-Cracking Kits

alphadogg writes "Dodgy salesmen in China are making money from long-known weaknesses in a Wi-Fi encryption standard, by selling network key-cracking kits for the average user. Wi-Fi USB adapters bundled with a Linux operating system, key-breaking software, and a detailed instruction book are being sold online and at China's bustling electronics bazaars. The kits, pitched as a way for users to surf the Web for free, have drawn enough buyers and attention that one Chinese auction site, Taobao.com, had to ban their sale last year. With one of the 'network-scrounging cards,' or 'ceng wang ka' in Chinese, a user with little technical knowledge can easily steal passwords to get online via Wi-Fi networks owned by other people. The kits are also cheap. A merchant in a Beijing bazaar sold one for 165 yuan ($24), a price that included setup help from a man at the other end of the sprawling, multistory building."

Comments

WEP not secure, use WPA with random key

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Wifi cracking kit: Download here and use with brain 1.0 and any USB wireless dongle.

Video in action

[DNS-and-BIND]

Video of cengwang ka in action here. Someone whose mandarin is better than mine will have to provide a translation. "Mee-ma" means password. Heck, I might get one just to use it in airports and other places where jerks charge for internet. Evidently they are illegal as taobao.com (the Chinese ebay) doesn't list them while a simple google search turns up dozens of vendors. I'll have to check on these next time I go to the computer market.

Another notable aspect of this story is that it's actually accurate. China is a blank slate to most Westerners and I have seen journalists fabricate the most outrageous lies simply because it "fits the narrative" (narrative=preconceived ideas). No surprise the guy who wrote this was in Beijing, it's like the world ends for journalists outside the fifth ring road.

Re:Video in action

[Zarel]

You Slashdotters haven't been very nice when talking about my country recently. :( But I'll forgive you. Here's a translation:

woman: "[incoherent] Wi-Fi key cracking kits are an extremely important threat to the safety of the Internet"

woman: "Here, we simply follow these instructions, and then use the CD drive [sic] to access the password cracking software, and five seconds later, it indeed shows us five Wi-Fi access points. Clicking one, the computer starts to automatically crack the password, and after a while, it displays a string of numbers."

man: "[incoherent] Looking at this, does this say that it's done yet?"

other man: "Yeah, it says it's successful; it's connected to the Internet now."

man: "So you can go and browse the web now?"

other man: "Yep, you can, using its [the key cracker's] connection."

other man: "Here, you can see four wireless signals, and the connections are pretty nice, at a speed of [incoherent]."

woman: "Continuing our explanation, these key cracking kits are a type of external Wi-Fi card, but their ability to search for access points is stronger. What's scarier is that it comes with black-hat hacking software, that can let you hack into others' router administration panels. If this kind of tool falls into the wrong hands, it could have serious consequences, such as disruption of service."

other man: "This software is very powerful. This one can crack passwords, and see here, I'm copying this guy's files - copying them to my own computer."

woman: "[some organization I didn't catch the name of] says that Internet hacking incidents are steadily increasing. In actuality, securing a computer is not difficult, and modern OSes have mechanisms to limit how many people can connect, and who has permission to connect."

other man: "Here, they've disabled DHCP and I'm connected, but I can't browse the Web since I don't have an IP address."

woman: "To clarify, Wi-Fi cracking happens overseas as well. Several countries have already enacted laws preventing it; [incoherent] and Singapore, for instance, have made Wi-Fi cracking crimes. England has not only made it illegal, but are actively hunting infringers. However, China still hasn't passed laws regarding it."

caller: "There are two sides to every issue. One one hand, it's password cracking, which is clearly wrong. But on the other hand, it's accessing the Internet for free, which should really be controlled by the owner of the access point and definitely [interrupted]"

Re:backtrack? aircrack-ng?

[SomeJoel]

Yeah, hey, look at TFS FFS you SOB:

a user with little technical knowledge can easily steal passwords

Note the lack of an article between "with" and "little".

Backtrack 4 on ebay

[kaptink]

Out of curiousity I put backtrack in to ebay and what do you know, theres half a dozen backtrack 4 dvds for sale as Hacking Operating System.

But no rerturns accepted!

That's for WEP ...

[Agarax]

You don't NEED packet injection, you just need it if you want to break into the network anytime soon. Sitting and listening to normal traffic will eventually get you enough packets to attempt to break it.

For WPA you don't even need packet injection, just deauth a client that is connected, collect their reconnection packets, and then run a dictionary/brute force attack against the handshake.

Re:I have a question.

[timeOday]

The summary says what the motive is: to make $24 selling the kits.

Re:Are these available in the states?

[geekoid]

There are several tools you can use to get the SSID from a "Non broadcasting" device.

Linux:
http://www.kismetwireless.net/,
Airjack,
Many others...

Windows:
AirMagnet
AirSnort

I just listed the most common for the particular OS. I do know they can be compiled onto other systems.

If you take a minute to step away from your knee jerk reaction to correcting people and think about it, you would realize* that at some point it has to broadcast the SSID or know one could ever maintain connection.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/04/21/wi-fi-mythbuster-do-not-hide-your-ssid/

So it is trivial to get an SSID from one that is hidden.

* Against all evidence. I'm assuming your not actually an idiot

Re:Are these available in the states?

[Maarx]

Aircrack is, curiously, one of the few tools that cannot be ported to windows, and which actually manages to attract people to run linux, just for this app. It's a "killer app", as they call it, which carries it's platform. Makes me think, sometimes, more open source software should be circulated without any windows ports or binaries at all, to keep people on open source platforms... of course, it goes against the whole idea of open...

While I cannot debate it's status as a "killer app", the reason it works is not that the code for Aircrack cannot be ported, but instead because Windows does not possess the underlying DLL's to support it. In fact, the fork project, Aircrack-ng, has a port for Windows, with a giant alt-text disclaimer on the download link that says it doesn't work without DLL's that they do not provide (i.e., they do not believe exist). The result is the same, but it's inaccurate to speak of it as an inability to translate the program "source".