Wireless LANs have inherent security weaknesses from which wired networks are exempt. Wireless cracking is an information network attack similar to a direct intrusion. Two frequent types of vulnerabilities in wireless LANs are those caused by poor configuration, and those caused by weak encryption or flawed security protocols. Wireless network basicseditWireless local area networks are based on IEEE 8. This is a set of standards defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. By default, people refer to infrastructure networks. Infrastructure networks are composed of one or more access points that coordinate the wireless traffic between the nodes and often connect the nodes to a wired network, acting as a bridge or a router. Each access point constitutes a network that is named a basic service set or BSS. A BSS is identified by a BSSID, usually the MAC address of the access point. Each access point is part of an extended service set or ESS, which is identified by an ESSID or SSID in short, usually a character string. A basic service set consists of one access point and several wireless clients. An extended service set is a configuration with multiple access points and roaming capabilities for the clients. An independent basic service set or IBSS is the ad hoc configuration. This configuration allows wireless clients to connect to each other directly, without an access point as a central manager. Access points broadcast a signal regularly to make the network known to clients. They relay traffic from one wireless client to another. Access points may determine which clients may connect, and when clients do, they are said to be associated with the access point. To obtain access to an access point, both the BSSID and the SSID are required. Ad hoc networks have no access point for central coordination. Each node connects in a peer to peer way. This configuration is an independent basic service set or IBSS. Ad hoc networks also have an SSID. Wireless network framesedit8. Data frames convey the real data, and are similar to those of Ethernet. Management frames maintain both network configuration and connectivity. Control frames manage access to the ether and prevent access points and clients from interfering with each other in the ether. Some information on management frames will be helpful to better understand what programs for reconnaissance do. Beacon frames are used primarily in reconnaissance. They advertise the existence and basic configuration of the network. Each frame contains the BSSID, the SSID, and some information on basic authentication and encryption. Clients use the flow of beacon frames to monitor the signal strength of their access point. Probe request frames are almost the same as the beacon frames. A probe request frame is sent from a client when it wants to connect to a wireless network. It contains information about the requested network. Probe response frames are sent to clients to answer probe request frames. One response frame answers each request frame, and it contains information on the capabilities and configurations of the network. Useful for reconnaissance. Authentication request frames are sent by clients when they want to connect to a network. Authentication precedes association in infrastructure networks. Either open authentication or shared key authentication is possible. After serious flaws were found in shared key authentication, most networks switched to open authentication, combined with a stronger authentication method applied after the association phase. Authentication response frames are sent to clients to answer authentication request frames. There is one answer to each request, and it contains either status information or a challenge related to shared key authentication. Association request frames are sent by clients to associate with the network. An association request frame contains much of the same information as the probe request contains, and it must have the SSID. This can be used to obtain the SSID when a network is configured to hide the SSID in beacon frames. Association response frames are sent to clients to answer an association request frame. They contain a bit of network information and indicate whether the association was successful. Deauthentication and disassociation frames are sent to a node to notify that an authentication or an association has failed and must be established anew. Reconnaissance of wireless networkseditWardriving is a common method of wireless network reconnaissance. A well equipped wardriver uses a laptop computer with a wireless card, an antenna mounted on the car, a power inverter, a connected GPS receiver, and can connect to the internet wirelessly. The purpose of wardriving is to locate a wireless network and to collect information about its configuration and associated clients. The laptop computer and the wireless card must support a mode called monitor or rfmon. NetstumblereditNetstumbler is a network discovery program for Windows. It is free. Netstumbler has become one of the most popular programs for wardriving and wireless reconnaissance, although it has a disadvantage. It can be detected easily by most wireless intrusion detection systems, because it actively probes a network to collect information. Netstumbler has integrated support for a GPS unit. With this support, Netstumbler displays GPS coordinate information next to the information about each discovered network, which can be useful for finding specific networks again after having sorted out collected data. The latest release of Netstumbler is of 1 April 2. It does not work well with 6. Windows XP or Windows Vista. SSIDer is a Wi Fi network scanner for the 3. Windows XP, Vista, 7, Windows 8 and Android. It is free and open source. The software uses the current wireless card or a wireless USB adapter and supports most GPS devices namely those that use NMEA 2. Its graphical user interface shows MAC address, SSID, signal strength, hardware brand, security, and network type of nearby Wi Fi networks. It can also track the strength of the signals and show them in a time graph. Kismet is a wireless network traffic analyser for OS X, Linux, Open. BSD, Net. BSD, and Free. BSD. It is free and open source. Kismet has become the most popular program for serious wardrivers. It offers a rich set of features, including deep analysis of captured traffic. WiresharkeditWireshark is a packet sniffer and network traffic analyser that can run on all popular operating systems, but support for the capture of wireless traffic is limited. It is free and open source. Decoding and analysing wireless traffic is not the foremost function of Wireshark, but it can give results that cannot be obtained with other programs. Wireshark requires sufficient knowledge of the network protocols to obtain a full analysis of the traffic, however. Analysers of Air. MagneteditAir. Magnet Laptop Analyser and Air. Magnet Handheld Analyser are wireless network analysis tools made by Air. Magnet. The company started with the Handheld Analyser, which was very suitable for surveying sites where wireless networks were deployed as well as for finding rogue access points. How to Mute Tabs in Google Chrome. Your favorite technology company, Google, is working on an upcoming feature that could put the kibosh on autoplaying videos for good. Soon youll be able to silence the worst offenders permanently, saving you the headache of searching for a mute button over and over again. The muting feature is still under development, but you can try it out yourself right now. Youll need to install Google Chrome Canary, the developer focused version of the browser that features newer, but more experimental and therefore buggier features. Canary is less stable than your standard version of Google Chrome, so you shouldnt use it as your default browser. Youll also need to open Canary from the terminal or command line, adding enable featuresSound. Content. Setting to your command. You can turn the sound option on or off when you click the site information box in the URL bar the icon is usually a lowercase i or a green lock if youre on a secure page. One of the great things about Google Chrome is that it offers thousands of third party extensionsRead more Read. You can mute tabs temporarily by right clicking on them and selecting Mute Tab. If for some reason your Chrome browser doesnt support tab muting, you can enable it manually, but be warned enabling experimental features could compromise your security or delete your browsing data. If you type chrome flags into your URL bar, youll see a list of disabled experimental features search for mute to find the Tab Audio Muting UI Control. Enabling this feature will not only enable the speaker indicator in your tab, but will allow you to right click and mute said tab, or multiple tabs depending on your selection. It wont keep that site muted if you decide to close and reopen the tab, but itll scratch the itch until this experimental feature gets into the hands of normal Chrome users. Google Chrome to Let Users Permanently Mute Annoying Video Ads That Play Sound Automatically The Independent.