Denial of Service (DoS) and distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks involve an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. This may simply be for malicious purposes as is often the case when big commercial or famous web sites undergo a DDoS attack. However, it is also possible to exploit the system’s response to such an attack to break system firewalls, access virtual private networks, and to access other private resources. A DoS attack can also be used to affect a complete network or even a whole section of the Internet.

Commonly, attack involves simply saturating the target machine with external internet requests. In the case of a DDoS attack the perpetrator recruits other unwitting computers into a network and uses a multitude of machines to mount the attack. The result is that the resource, whether it is a website, an email server, or a database, cannot respond to legitimate traffic in a timely manner and so essentially becomes unavailable to users.

Methods for configuring a network to filter out known DoS attack software and to recognize some of the traffic patterns associated with a mounting DoS attack are available. However, current filters usually rely on the computer being attacked to check whether or not incoming information requests are legitimate or not. This consumes its resources and in the case of a massive DDoS can compound the problem.

Now, computer engineers John Wu, Tong Liu, Andy Huang, and David Irwin of Auburn University have devised a filter to protect systems against DoS attacks that circumvents this problem by developing a new passive protocol that must be in place at each end of the connection: user and resource.

Their protocol – Identity-Based Privacy-Protected Access Control Filter (IPACF) – blocks threats to the gatekeeping computers, the Authentication Servers (AS), and so allows legitimate users with valid passwords to access private resources.

The user’s computer has to present a filter value for the server to do a quick check. The filter value is a one-time secret that needs to be presented with the pseudo ID. The pseudo ID is also one-time use. Attackers cannot forge either of these values correctly and so attack packets are filtered out.

One potential drawback of the added layer of information transfer required for checking user requests is that it could add to the resources needed by the server. However, the researchers have tested how well IPACF copes in the face of a massive DDoS attacks simulated on a network consisting of 1000 nodes with 10 gigabits per second bandwidth. They found that the server suffers little degradation, negligible added information transfer delay (latency) and minimal extra processor usage even when the 10 Gbps pipe to the authentication server is filled with DoS packets. Indeed, the IPACF takes just 6 nanoseconds to reject a non-legitimate information packet associated with the DoS attack.

Below is most common used wireless routers admin password list, and at the bottom i have a link to a huge db of passwords for wireless routers.

MORE HUGE LIST

Linksys Wireless Router

WRT54G Authentication Bypass vulnerability Exploitation Tool. Once your wifi card has detected the WRT54G, you can simply click connect; even if this router asks for a password, it will still provide you with “Local Only” access in order to authenticate your key against the router. Once this “Local Access” is obtained, you can use the WRT54G Raper to disable the security and change the admin password.The rest is up to you.

Below is list of Linux Security Tools that you must know about as being Linux Administrator.

1) Wireshark – network traffic analyzer
Wireshark is a network traffic analyzer, or “sniffer”, for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. A sniffer is a tool used to capture packets off the wire. Wireshark decodes numerous protocols (too many to list).This package provides wireshark (the GTK+ version)

http://www.wireshark.org

2) Nessus – Remote network security auditor
The Nessus® vulnerability scanner, is the world-leader in active scanners, featuring high speed discovery, configuration auditing, asset profiling, sensitive data discovery and vulnerability analysis of your security posture. Nessus scanners can be distributed throughout an entire enterprise, inside DMZs, and across physically separate networks.

http://www.nessus.org

3) Nmap – The Network Mapper
Nmap (”Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and both console and graphical versions are available.

4) Etherape – graphical network monitor modeled after etherman
EtherApe is a graphical network monitor for Unix modeled after etherman. Featuring link layer, ip and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.It supports Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network.

http://etherape.sourceforge.net

5) Kismet – Wireless 802.11b monitoring tool
Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g traffic.
Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden networks, and infering the presence of nonbeaconing networks via data traffic.

http://www.kismetwireless.net

6) Chkrootkit – Checks for signs of rootkits on the local system
chkrootkit identifies whether the target computer is infected with a rootkit. Some of the rootkits that chkrootkit identifies are:
1. lrk3, lrk4, lrk5, lrk6 (and some variants);
2. Solaris rootkit;
3. FreeBSD rootkit;
4. t0rn (including latest variant);
5. Ambient’s Rootkit for Linux (ARK);
6. Ramen Worm;
7. rh[67]-shaper;
8. RSHA;
9. Romanian rootkit;
10. RK17;
11. Lion Worm;
12. Adore Worm.
Please note that this is not a definitive test, it does not ensure that the target has not been cracked. In addition to running chkrootkit, one should perform more specific tests.

http://www.chkrootkit.org

7) Rkhunter – rootkit, backdoor, sniffer and exploit scanner
Rootkit Hunter scans systems for known and unknown rootkits, backdoors, sniffers and exploits.
It checks for:
- MD5 hash changes;
- files commonly created by rootkits;
- executables with anomalous file permissions;
- suspicious strings in kernel modules;
- hidden files in system directories;
and can optionally scan within files. Using rkhunter alone does not guarantee that a system is not compromised. Running additional tests, such as chkrootkit, is recommended.

http://www.rootkit.nl

8 ) tiger – Report system security vulnerabilities
TIGER, or the ‘tiger’ scripts, is a set of Bourne shell scripts, C programs and data files which are used to perform a security audit of UNIX systems. TIGER has one primary goal: report ways ‘root’ can be compromised.Debian’s TIGER incorporates new checks primarily oriented towards Debian distribution including: md5sums checks of installed files, location of files not belonging to packages, check of security advisories and analysis of local listening processes.

9) GnuPG – GNU privacy guard
GnuPG is GNU’s tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures. It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC2440.GnuPG does not use any patented algorithms so it cannot be compatible with PGP2 because it uses IDEA (which is patented worldwide).

http://www.gnupg.org/

10) Nemesis – TCP/IP Packet Injection Suite
Nemesis is a command-line network packet crafting and injection utility for UNIX-like and Windows systems. Nemesis, is well suited for testing Network Intrusion Detection Systems, firewalls, IP stacks and a variety of other tasks. As a command-line driven utility, Nemesis is perfect for automation and scripting.
Nemesis can natively craft and inject ARP, DNS, ETHERNET, ICMP, IGMP, IP, OSPF, RIP, TCP and UDP packets. Using the IP and the Ethernet injection modes, almost any custom packet can be crafted and injected.

http://nemesis.sourceforge.net

11) Tcpdump – A powerful tool for network monitoring and data acquisition
This program allows you to dump the traffic on a network. tcpdump is able to examine IPv4, ICMPv4, IPv6, ICMPv6, UDP, TCP, SNMP, AFS BGP, RIP, PIM, DVMRP, IGMP, SMB, OSPF, NFS and many other packet types.
It can be used to print out the headers of packets on a network interface, filter packets that match a certain expression. You can use this tool to track down network problems, to detect “ping attacks” or to monitor network activities.

http://www.tcpdump.org/

12) OpenSSH – secure shell server
This is the portable version of OpenSSH, a free implementation of the Secure Shell protocol as specified by the IETF secsh working group.Ssh (Secure Shell) is a program for logging into a remote machine and for executing commands on a remote machine. It provides secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. X11 connections and arbitrary TCP/IP ports can also be forwarded over the secure channel. It is intended as a replacement for rlogin, rsh and rcp, and can be used to provide applications with a secure communication channel.This package provides the sshd server.
In some countries it may be illegal to use any encryption at all without a special permit.

http://www.openssh.com/

13) Denyhosts – an utility to help sys admins thwart ssh hackers
DenyHosts is a program that automatically blocks ssh brute-force attacks by adding entries to /etc/hosts.deny. It will also inform Linux administrators about offending hosts, attacked users and suspicious logins.Syncronization with a central server is possible too.
Differently from other software that do same work, denyhosts doesn’t need support for packet filtering or any other kind of firewall in your kernel

http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/

14) Snort – Flexible Network Intrusion Detection System

Snort is a libpcap-based packet sniffer/logger which can be used as a lightweight network intrusion detection system. It features rules based logging and can perform content searching/matching in addition to being used to detect a variety of other attacks and probes, such as buffer overflows, stealth port scans, CGI attacks, SMB probes, and much more. Snort has a real-time alerting capability, with alerts being sent to syslog, a separate “alert” file, or even to a Windows computer via Samba.
This package provides the plain-vanilla snort distribution and does not provide database (available in snort-pgsql and snort-mysql) support.

http://www.snort.org/

15) Firestarter – gtk program for managing and observing your firewall
Firestarter is a complete firewall tool for Linux machines. It features an easy to use firewall wizard to quickly create a firewall. Using the program you can then open and close ports with a few clicks, or stealth your machine giving access only to a select few. The real-time hit monitor shows attackers probing your machine.

http://www.fs-security.com

16) clamav – anti-virus utility for Unix – command-line interface
Clam AntiVirus is an anti-virus toolkit for Unix. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon in the clamav-daemon package, a command-line scanner in the clamav package, and a tool for automatic updating via the Internet in the clamav-freshclam package. The programs are based on libclamav3, which can be used by other software.
This package contains the command line interface. Features:
- built-in support for various archive formats, including Zip, RAR, Tar,
Gzip, Bzip2, OLE2, Cabinet, CHM, BinHex, SIS and others;
- built-in support for almost all mail file formats;
- built-in support for ELF executables and Portable Executable files
compressed with UPX, FSG, Petite, NsPack, wwpack32, MEW, Upack and
obfuscated with SUE, Y0da Cryptor and others;
- built-in support for popular document formats including Microsoft
Office and Mac Office files, HTML, RTF and PDF.
For scanning to work, a virus database is needed. There are two options for getting it:
- clamav-freshclam: updates the database from Internet. This is
recommended with Internet access.
- clamav-data: for users without Internet access. The package is
not updated once installed. The clamav-getfiles package allows
creating custom packages from an Internet-connected computer.

http://www.clamav.net/

17) Ettercap – Multipurpose sniffer/interceptor/logger for switched LAN
Ettercap supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones) and includes many feature for network and host analysis.Data injection in an established connection and filtering (substitute or drop a packet) on the fly is also possible, keeping the connection synchronized.
Many sniffing modes were implemented to give you a powerful and complete sniffing suite. It’s possible to sniff in four modes: IP Based, MAC Based, ARP Based (full-duplex) and PublicARP Based (half-duplex).
It has the ability to check whether you are in a switched LAN or not, and to use OS fingerprints (active or passive) to let you know the geometry of the LAN.

http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/

18) Netcat – TCP/IP swiss army knife
A simple Unix utility which reads and writes data across network connections using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable “back-end” tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities.

http://netcat.sourceforge.net

19) MTR – mtr combines the functionality of the ‘traceroute’ and ‘ping’ programs in a single network diagnostic tool.
As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it determines the address of each network hop between the machines, it sends a sequence ICMP ECHO requests to each one to determine the quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints running statistics about each machine.

http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/
20) Hping3 – Active Network Smashing Tool
hping3 is a network tool able to send custom ICMP/UDP/TCP packets and to display target replies like ping does with ICMP replies. It handles fragmentation and arbitrary packet body and size, and can be used to transfer files under supported protocols. Using hping3, you can test firewall rules, perform (spoofed) port scanning, test network performance using different protocols, do path MTU discovery, perform traceroute-like actions under different protocols, fingerprint remote operating systems, audit TCP/IP stacks, etc. hping3 is scriptable using the TCL language.

http://www.hping.org

21) ngrep – grep for network traffic
ngrep strives to provide most of GNU grep’s common features, applying them to the network layer. ngrep is a pcap-aware tool that will allow you to specify extended regular expressions to match against data payloads of packets. It currently recognizes TCP, UDP and ICMP across Ethernet, PPP, SLIP and null interfaces, and understands bpf filter logic in the same fashion as more common packet sniffing tools, such as tcpdump and snoop.

http://ngrep.sourceforge.net/

22) john – active password cracking tool
john, mostly known as John the Ripper, is a tool designed to help systems administrators to find weak (easy to guess or crack through brute force) passwords, and even automatically mail users warning them about it, if it is desired.
It can also be used with different cyphertext formats, including Unix’s DES and MD5, Kerberos AFS passwords, Windows’ LM hashes, BSDI’s extended DES, and OpenBSD’s Blowfish.

http://www.openwall.com/john/

23) tcptrace – Tool for analyzing tcpdump output
Tcptrace is a tool for analyzing and reporting on tcpdump (or other libpcap) dump files. It can summarize the data or generate graph data for use with the gnuplot tool from the gnuplot package. Graph data can be created for throughput, RTT, time sequences, segment size, and cwin.
http://jarok.cs.ohiou.edu/software/tcptrace/

24) netdude – NETwork DUmp data Displayer and Editor for tcpdump trace files
It is a GUI-based tool that allows you to make detailed changes to packets in tcpdump trace files, in particular, it can currently do the following:
* Set the value of any field in IP, TCP and UDP packet headers.
* Copy, move and delete packets in the trace file.
* Fragment and reassemble IP packets.
* Netdude constantly communicates with a tcpdump process to update
the familiar tcpdump output that corresponds to the trace. This
also means that any changes made to your local version of tcpdump
are reflected in Netdude.
* Plugin architecture: people can easily add plugins for specific
tasks. The code comes with a plugin for checksum correction in IP,
TCP and UDP, and a dummy plugin.
* Through the plugin mechanism, Netdude provides a good facility for
writing tcpdump trace file filters.
http://netdude.sourceforge.net
25) tcpreplay – Tool to replay saved tcpdump files at arbitrary speeds

Tcpreplay is aimed at testing the performance of a NIDS by replaying real background network traffic in which to hide attacks. Tcpreplay allows you to control the speed at which the traffic is replayed, and can replay arbitrary tcpdump traces. Unlike programmatically-generated artificial traffic which doesn’t exercise the application/protocol inspection that a NIDS performs, and doesn’t reproduce the real-world anomalies that appear on production networks (asymmetric routes, traffic bursts/lulls, fragmentation, retransmissions, etc.), tcpreplay allows for exact replication of real traffic seen on real networks.
http://tcpreplay.synfin.net
26) Dsniff – Various tools to sniff network traffic for cleartext insecurities
This package contains several tools to listen to and create network traffic:
* arpspoof – Send out unrequested (and possibly forged) arp replies.
* dnsspoof – forge replies to arbitrary DNS address / pointer queries
on the Local Area Network.
* dsniff – password sniffer for several protocols.
* filesnarf – saves selected files sniffed from NFS traffic.
* macof – flood the local network with random MAC addresses.
* mailsnarf – sniffs mail on the LAN and stores it in mbox format.
* msgsnarf – record selected messages from different Instant Messengers.
* sshmitm – SSH monkey-in-the-middle. proxies and sniffs SSH traffic.
* sshow – SSH traffic analyser.
* tcpkill – kills specified in-progress TCP connections.
* tcpnice – slow down specified TCP connections via “active”
traffic shaping.
* urlsnarf – output selected URLs sniffed from HTTP traffic in CLF.
* webmitm – HTTP / HTTPS monkey-in-the-middle. transparently proxies.
* webspy – sends URLs sniffed from a client to your local browser
(requires libx11-6 installed).

http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/
27) scapy – Packet generator/sniffer and network scanner/discovery
Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation tool, packet generator, network scanner, network discovery, packet sniffer, etc. It can for the moment replace hping, 85% of nmap, arpspoof, arp-sk, arping, tcpdump, tethereal, p0f, ….
In scapy you define a set of packets, then it sends them, receives answers, matches requests with answers and returns a list of packet couples (request, answer) and a list of unmatched packets. This has the big advantage over tools like nmap or hping that an answer is not reduced to (open/closed/filtered), but is the whole packet.
http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/
28) Ntop – display network usage in top-like format
ntop is a Network Top program. It displays a summary of network usage by machines on your network in a format reminiscent of the unix top utility.It can also be run in web mode, which allows the display to be browsed with a web browser.
http://www.ntop.org/
29) NBTscan – A program for scanning networks for NetBIOS name information
NBTscan is a program for scanning IP networks for NetBIOS name information. It sends NetBIOS status query to each address in supplied range and lists received information in human readable form. For each responded host it lists IP address, NetBIOS computer name, logged-in user name and MAC address (such as Ethernet).

http://www.unixwiz.net/tools/nbtscan.html
30) tripwire – file and directory integrity checker
Tripwire is a tool that aids system administrators and users in monitoring a designated set of files for any changes. Used with system files on a regular (e.g., daily) basis, Tripwire can notify system administrators of corrupted or tampered files, so damage control measures can be taken in a timely manner.
http://www.tripwire.com/

What is Net Tools :

Net Tools is a comprehensive set of host monitoring, network scanning, security, administration tools and much more, all with a highly intuitive user interface. It’s an ideal tool for those who work in the network security, administration, training, internet forensics or law enforcement internet crimes fields. Net Tools is mainly written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual Studio .NET.

Screenshots

Here are a few screenshots of Net Tools 5. Click to enlarge.

Download Net Tools 5.0

[ download ] (version 5.0.70)

Features:

Net Tools 5.0 (build 70) contains a whole variety of network tools. Here is a list of the most important tools:

1) IP Address Scanner
2) IP Calculator
3) IP Converter
4) Port Listener
5) Port Scanner
6) Ping
7) NetStat (2 ways)
8 ) Trace Route (2 ways)
9) TCP/IP Configuration
10) Online – Offline Checker
11) Resolve Host & IP
12) Time Sync
13) Whois & MX Lookup
14) Connect0r
15) Connection Analysator and protector
16) Net Sender
17) E-mail seeker
18) Net Pager
19) Active and Passive port scanner
20) Spoofer
21) Hack Trapper
22) HTTP flooder (DoS)
23) Mass Website Visiter
24) Advanced Port Scanner
25) Trojan Hunter (Multi IP)
26) Port Connecter Tool
27) Advanced Spoofer
28) Advanced Anonymous E-mailer
29) Simple Anonymous E-mailer
30) Anonymous E-mailer with Attachment Support
31) Mass E-mailer
32) E-mail Bomber
33) E-mail Spoofer
34) Simple Port Scanner (fast)
35) Advanced Netstat Monitoring
36) X Pinger
37) Web Page Scanner
38) Fast Port Scanner
39) Deep Port Scanner
40) Fastest Host Scanner (UDP)
41) Get Header
42) Open Port Scanner
43) Multi Port Scanner
44) HTTP scanner (Open port 80 subnet scanner)
45) Multi Ping for Cisco Routers
46) TCP Packet Sniffer
47) UDP flooder
48) Resolve and Ping
49) Multi IP ping
50) File Dependency Sniffer
51) EXE-joiner (bind 2 files)
52) Encrypter
53) Advanced Encryption
54) File Difference Engine
55) File Comparasion
56) Mass File Renamer
57) Add Bytes to EXE
58) Variable Encryption
59) Simple File Encryption
60) ASCII to Binary (and Binary to ASCII)
61) Enigma
62) Password Unmasker
63) Credit Card Number Validate and Generate
64) Create Local HTTP Server
65) eXtreme UDP Flooder
66) Web Server Scanner
67) Force Reboot
68) Webpage Info Seeker
69) Bouncer
70) Advanced Packet Sniffer
71) IRC server creater
72) Connection Tester
73) Fake Mail Sender
74) Bandwidth Monitor
75) Remote Desktop Protocol Scanner
76) MX Query
77) Messenger Packet Sniffer
78) API Spy
79) DHCP Restart
80) File Merger
81) E-mail Extractor (crawler / harvester bot)
82) Open FTP Scanner
83) Advanced System Locker
84) Advanced System Information
85) CPU Monitor
86) Windows Startup Manager
87) Process Checker
88) IP String Collecter
89) Mass Auto-Emailer (Database mailer; Spammer)
90) Central Server (Base Server; Echo Server; Time Server; Telnet Server; HTTP Server; FTP Server)
91) Fishing Port Scanner (with named ports)
92) Mouse Record / Play Automation (Macro Tool)
93) Internet / LAN Messenger Chat (Server + Client)
94) Timer Shutdown/Restart/Log Off/Hibernate/Suspend/ Control
95) Hash MD5 Checker
96) Port Connect – Listen tool
97) Internet MAC Address Scanner (Multiple IP)
98) Connection Manager / Monitor
99) Direct Peer Connecter (Send/Receive files + chat)
100) Force Application Termination (against Viruses and Spyware)
101) Easy and Fast Screenshot Maker (also Web Hex Color Picker)
102) COM Detect and Test
103) Create Virtual Drives
104) URL Encoder
105) WEP/WPA Key Generator
106) Sniffer.NET
107) File Shredder
108) Local Access Enumerater
109) Steganographer (Art of hiding secret data in pictures)
110) Subnet Calculater
111) Domain to IP (DNS)
112) Get SNMP Variables
113) Internet Explorer Password Revealer
114) Advanced Multi Port Scanner
115) Port Identification List (+port scanner)
116) Get Quick Net Info
117) Get Remote MAC Address
118) Share Add
119) Net Wanderer
120) WhoIs Console
121) Cookies Analyser
122) Hide Secret Data In Files
123) Packet Generator
124) Secure File Splitting
125) My File Protection (Password Protect Files, File Injections)
126) Dynamic Switch Port Mapper
127) Internet Logger (Log URL)
128) Get Whois Servers
129) File Split&Merge
130) Hide Drive
131) Extract E-mails from Documents
132) Net Tools Mini (Client/Server, Scan, ICMP, Net Statistics, Interactive, Raw Packets, DNS, Whois, ARP, Computer’s IP, Wake On LAN)
133) Hook Spy
134) Software Uninstaller
135) Tweak & Clean XP
136) Steganographic Random Byte Encryption
137) NetTools Notepad (encrypt your sensitive data)
138) File Encrypter/Decrypter
139) Quick Proxy Server
140) Connection Redirector (HTTP, IRC, … All protocols supported)
141) Local E-mail Extractor
142) Recursive E-mail Extractor
143) Outlook Express E-mail Extractor
144) Telnet Client
145) Fast Ip Catcher
146) Monitor Host IP
147) FreeMAC (MAC Address Editor)
148) QuickFTP Server (+user accounts support)
149) NetTools Macro Recorder/Player (Keybord and Mouse Hook)
150) Network Protocol Analyzer
151) Steganographic Tools (Picture, Sounds, ZIP Compression and Misc Methods)
152) WebMirror (Website Ripper)
153) GeoLocate IP
154) Google PageRank Calculator
155) Google Link Crawler (Web Result Grabber)
156) Network Adapter Binder
157) Remote LAN PC Lister
158) Fast Sinusoidal Encryption
159) Software Scanner
160) Fast FTP Client
161) Network Traffic Analysis
162) Network Traffic Visualiser
163) Internet Protocol Scanner
164) Net Meter (Bandwidth Traffic Meter)
165) Net Configuration Switcher
166) Advanced System Hardware Info
167) Live System Information
168) Network Profiler
169) Network Browser
170) Quick Website Maker and Web Gallery Creator
171) Remote PC Shutdown
172) Serial Port Terminal
173) Standard Encryptor
174) Tray Minimizer
175) Extra Tools (nmap console & win32 version)

Many extra features and utilities are included in this package!

Download Net Tools 5.0

[ download ] (version 5.0.70)

For a long time now, wireless internet has become a much more popular way of surfing the internet or general networks for that matter. They have, essentially, allowed people to leave their homes with their laptop, palm pilot, tablet PC, or whatever it may be, and they are able to surf they are able to have the same possibilities they could have as if they were in their office or at home. In the beginning, wireless networking seemed like a pretty simple and basic idea,. Though, yes, it is a simple concept and is very convenient…it may be fairly convenient to someone who feels like “stealing” your signal. Or better yet, someone stealing your passwords because you figured, “O, I won’t need 128-bit encryption, nobody will try to jack this shizzle.” Well, my pitiful mistaken friend, the truth is that if you’re computer is connected to a network of other computers…you are ultimately vulnerable to a number of dangerous things. Whether it be viruses, trojans, ‘hackers’, ‘crackers’, squirrels, or just nosy neighbors, you are VULNERABLE! Now you may be thinking, “Is there anything I can do to help protect myself on my wireless network?” As a matter-a-fact, yes, yes there is. There are several different methods of protecting yourself while you use a wireless LAN (Local Area Network). One of the most powerful being encryption. Whether it be WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), using 128-bit encryption, or even changing your SSID (Service Set Identifier). Any form of protection, is essentially keeping you one step closer from having your wireless signal stolen.

Changing your SSID
A Service Set Identifier (SSID) is a security measure that would allow someone to communicate with the ‘base station’. It basically allows only someone with the same SSID to communicate with the station. Now figuring out this SSID is easy if it is left on default. All an attacker really has to do is just bruteforce the signal to figure out the password. Because most people will choose a password that is easy to remember, it doesn’t always take an attacker too much time to gain access. And because of the fact that data packets are only encrypted, the SSID is broadcasted over in clear text. So basically, changing your SSID is a good idea though your new password should be much harder to guess than something like your name. Be sure to utilize the different characters on your keyboard.

WEP
Wired Equivalent Privacy, this is a widely used system that can be configured between none, 64-bit, and 128-bit. Though this may seem good, WEP has a huge security flaw. The fact that some with some patience can easily crack the WEP key with something like Airsnort is kind of discouraging. All one would have to do is collect millions of packets and eventually the WEP key can be cracked. You see, WEP uses what is called the RC4 algorithm to turn the information into infinite lengths of numbers. (RC4 is a.k.a. a stream cipher). Basically the sender and the receiver have the same key and when the receiver gets the encrypted packets the key is used to decipher it. All a passerby has to do is collect enough initialization vectors which are sent as 24-bit fields in the encrypted package and wait until a collision occurs between two IVs. Once someone get’s enough IVs to figure out the plaintext, bam they can decipher the WEP key. To fix some of these flaws you can use WPA (WiFi Protected Access). Even this encryption method fixes the flaws in WEP, it is still semi-susceptible to DoS attacks. Though WEP isn’t entirely secure, it is better than nothing and it is easy to activate on your wireless router. Just look in your corresponding manual.

Disable SSID Broadcasting
Most wireless routers will broadcast your SSID so someone ‘authorized’ to that service can access it via hotspot, etc.. Mainly you will find SSID broadcasts from larger businesses and not very likely to find it in homes. This is because of the fact that the SSID is not encrypted at all. So if someone really wanted to, it wouldn’t be hard for them to intercept this message and get them one step closer to getting into your wireless network! So all-in-all, this feature is unnecessary to use in normal home use. This feature, although increasing your security, still allows your SSID to get by. This step is easy and is a good thing to disable on your router.

MAC Address Filtering
A network that does not have MAC address filtering turned on will allow anyone who knows the SSID to logon to the network. However, if one was to turn this filter on then when someone tries to get authenticated on the network they must first have their MAC address compared to the ones on the administrator’s list. His/her list would consist of every MAC address of every client on the network. This feature is a convenient and easy way to increase your WLAN security risks. Though it is possible for an attacker to spoof a MAC address and gain access that way, MAC address filtering is a good feature to having running on any wireless network big or small.

Well…this essentially concludes this version of “Securing your Wireless Network” and this paper, by no means, completely secures your WLAN from attackers. Like I said in the beginning of the article, you are ultimately ALWAYS vulnerable. No matter how secure you think you are, you can always take one more step to making yourself even more secure. One must continue to stay up-to-date and secure on their WLAN and make all the proper updates and what have you in order to keep it even somewhat secure. Remember, you’re never secure as you think you are.