In this demonstration, I’ll be sitting in between a target device and the router/gateway on a private network using Cain & Abel. Pentesters may not always be authorized to perform this type of attack because it may overreach the scope of the assessment and has obvious issues regarding privacy concerns.

Furthermore, the man-in-the-middle attack is often the initiator for more dangerous attacks. With this attack, the hacker possesses the ability to capture personal identifiable information, login credentials, decrypt information, and so on. The attacker cannot only see the communication traveling to-and-from the victim devices, but can also inject his own malicious traffic. It can be thought of as active eavesdropping. Most wireless drivers for Linux systems use the Linux Wireless Extensions interface, providing a consistent configuration interface for manipulating the wireless card.A man-in-the-middle attack occurs when an attacker sits in the middle of the communication between two victim devices, secretly relaying information back and forth on their behalf, similar to a proxy. Linux Wireless Extensions Compatible Drivers If your specific card isn t listed here you can search using Google with the card name and keyword chipset (e.g., WPC55AG chipset). One resource for identifying the chipset from the card manufacturer is available at. While there are only a handful of manufacturers that make the wireless chipset hardware, multiple vendors re-brand the cards, thus making it difficult to identify what the actual chipset is. Tipĭetermining the type of wireless card you have isn t always easy.

This section discusses how to complete this step based on the most common wireless card and driver combination for Linux. However, the commands you need in order to configure the card in monitor mode can differ based on the type of wireless card and driver that you are using. Wireshark does not do this automatically you have to manually configure your wireless card before starting your packet capture. In order to begin sniffing wireless traffic with Wireshark, your wireless card must be in monitor mode.

Wireshark monitor mode