Senior 1: Tere Maa(Mother) ke !@#@ ,  Behaan(Sister) Ki  @$@#$ blah blah bla bla bla.(friends from that part of India have a particular penchant for other peoples mothers and sisters and their names are always at the tip of their tongue..hehe)
S2: bla bla bla bla bla Ma bla bla behan bla bla
Some of them started plucking on my hairs and were pointing too my colored t-tshirt and commented(off course punctuated by MaKi’s and BehanKi’s). And then fell  the slaps. And hence had my first introduction to ragging at NIT hmrpur.

Later found out I was actually let of lightly compared to the others in the ground floor and the pulling on the hair and pointing at the T-shirt probably meant I was having long hairs for a 1st year and probably was not following the dress code of the time. Anyway it was one of the sucky first experience at the new place. Dont get me wrong I really loved the college experience though not the initial days. Anyway don’t know why I am writing about it now.

Have a great day.

Here materials are presented as a ppt and 2 camtesia screen video, one each for WEP and WPA-PSK.

Requirements

The slide gives the basic requirements you need to run Aircrack

In the above the main problem I had was to get the right network interface card. You can get a list of working cards with Backtrack at http://backtrack.offensive-security.com/index.php/HCL:Wireless . In mycase the build in lappy NIC was not supported so had to drop by FRYS and get a Hawking HWUG1 card for 34$(cheaper ones are also available online). Also VMWARE player only supports USB NIC cards, dont forget that.

WEP Cracking

This is as easy as it comes. Its a sure shot way to cracking unlike WPA. Time it takes depends on how much strength you have from the target WiFi router. In case it doesn’t work fast enough there are other ways to get around it(I will try to add those later).

The commands I have used above are.

Please not that things in [] are stuffs you need to fill out for your case and [//   ] is used to give comments.

airmon-ng

airodump-ng wlan0 [//here wlan0 is the network card name]

airodump-ng –w [filename] –bssid [bssid] –c[channel number] wlan [//again wlan is the card name and [bssid in the router MAC or Base Station ID]

aircrack-ng –a 1 –b [bssid] [filename] [//here filename is the .cap file that you created above like wep.cap etc]

Explanation of the commands.

Airmon-ng: airmon-ng is a bash script designed to turn wireless cards into monitor mode. It autodetects which card you have and run the right commands.

Airodump-ng : airodump-ng is a packet capture tool for aircrack-ng. It allows dumping packets directly from WLAN interface and saving them to a pcap or IVs file.

Airocrack-ng: aircrack-ng is a 802.11 WEP / WPA-PSK key cracker. It implements the so-called Fluhrer – Mantin – Shamir (FMS) attack, along with some new attacks by a talented hacker named KoreK. When enough encrypted packets have been gathered, aircrack-ng can almost instantly recover the WEP key

Hope rest of the stuff is clear from the video.

WPA-PSK Cracking

The requirements are same as the one given in the slide above.

Please note that here I have 2 connections in my lappy 1 through the lappy Windows NIC and the other through the USB Backtrack NIC. You need to obtain the handshake which is transferred only when some one logs in to the router. Here for the purpose of demonstration I have connected into the targeted router using my Lappy Windows NIC.

Also here cracking is done by using a dictionary, so the chances of cracking depends on the strength of the words in the dictionary. Check this site out -> http://www.wpacracker.com/gate/select . They claim they can crack the password the password in about 20 minutes if you upload the pcap file and give bssid. Ofcourse they do it for a fees.

Attached below is the video.

Hope the rest is clear from the video.

Ali comes to my mind all the time; personally I despise the guy and his attitude, but he is a perfect example of someone who grew up from the grassroots, who with his personal skills and audacity grew from rags to  riches. His personality is contradictory to my friends from UG or now who believe wealth is accommodated by working in a multinational and people who look down upon people who are entrepreneurs and who try to network from the grassroot level. The same is very much evident in the US, take it Eric the tattoo guy or Sam the repair man. As someone put it ‘America is a country of shopkeepers’(I think that was Churchill) and yet they have so much success.

Wow I really dont remember what point I was going to make, and also I dont think I am qualified.

BTW above I have equated success with fiscal success but I do understand that is not the case.

Below is a pic of Doha Downtown. Pretty much a country under construction with big visions for the future.

Musing back life has been good and personally was lucky enough to meet the right person at the right time nd being bestowed with ample opportunity.  My present life  is nothing that I  had planned of, getting a Masters in Technology/Science would have been something I would have been reluctant to consider in undergrad even if I had a gun pointed to my head, but fate had different plans. Life was much simpler in undergrad, everthing was well figured out be ; join the first job, get the promotion, move to that great place, buy that cool gadget> life was simple according to that naive undergrad… though have nothing to complain about, life’s been fair and I am glad to have met the wonderful people whom I would not have met if life had been as ‘planned’.

For all those people who are wondering(the 2 ppl who might stumble upon my blog) I am an international student at US of A.  This is my post after a very long time(after 1 1/2 yrs), I had given up  the blog for dead and had to use the ‘forgot password’ option to revive it now. Hoping to write regular entries here, looking forward to keeping this as a personal experience log in addition to my diary. Hope I don’t bore you with my narcissist rambling.

Saw this video about the international student experience in US of A by some one in Columbia University. Embedded here Part 1 of 4. Check out the rest at youtube. Somewhat true, I had gone through those experience and now see my  friends and roomies going through the same phases.

ChEErs!

Dear Candidate,

One who has a dream, who dared and will dare again.

Dreams are the stuff of life lived full. Dreams demand hard work and determination, tenacity and rocklike confidence

You know and I know that you have all these in full measure. A setback now cannot blight your future forever.

Trials and obstacles are the motivators that bring out the hidden best in us. May be some where you erred in judging the demands of the test, may be you had other transitory handicaps, may be you were prepared well but nervous – whatever the reason, you have no right to deem yourself unfit forever to be at SIBM. That defeatist attitude will not do.

In case you cannot wait do pursue other alternatives, get work experience or get admission in other MBA programs but do not deny yourself the dream of your life, because of one temporary setback.

The experience of the test you gave this time has given you insights to prepare better and smarter, has awakened your resolve that you can crack the SIBM test.

Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I know you will be with us at SIBM next time, because I know you have a dream, because I know you dared and because I know you will dare again with lessons learnt.

You have my best wishes and I look forward eagerly to welcome you at SIBM in 2009.

Regards,

@#$#@$

Director

       Some funny insults 

• Why don’t you blow your brains out? You have nothing to lose.
• Let’s play house. You be the door. I’ll slam you.
• What’s on your mind- If you’ll please excuse the exaggeration.
• I’ll swear eternal friendship for anyone who dislikes you as much as I do.
• I need a bookmark more than I need you, so step in front of a steamroller on your way out.
• I don’t know what makes you tick, but I hope it’s a time bomb.
• Next time you pass my house, I’ll appreciate it.
• You have a very striking face? How many times have you been struck there?
• Why don’t you sue your brains for non-support?
• Why don’t you leave and let live?
• You can could make a good living hiring yourself out to haunt people.
•  One should love animals. They are so tasty.

” The Indian ambassador to the US Ronen Sen should be recalled immediately. He has no right to insult chickens this way.”

Read the story that relates to here..

Cochin has visibly changed a lot since my last visit, development has taken root and optimism is in the air thanks to the Smart City and the state reconstruction drive taking place. Bill boards and ads everywhere now announce the impending housing and IT development boom and almost daily new project is being announced. Anyway better late than never, it was long overdue; hope we keep up the consistency. Wow and Cochin is damn hot (temp wise) now, coupled with the higher humidity its like a steaming pressure cooker here, hope its rains soon. See ya.