And right now, most devices 'only' support 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi. While there are also WiFi standards for 900 MHz, 3.6 GHz, 4.9 GHz, or even 60 GHz, they are not very popular at the moment.Īfter all, you need the router and the client to support the same frequency. It became common to see WiFi routers with both 2.4 and 5 GHz because this dual-band configuration allows you to use a high-frequency bandwidth near the router while also keeping devices from further away connected through 2.4 GHz. Meanwhile, a higher frequency gets you more bandwidth. You can see a brief overview of WiFi generations in the image below.īut why do we use different frequencies in the first place?Ī lower frequency generally allows for a wider range. By injecting enough frames into wireless traffic, it can eventually crack WEP and WPA-PSK keys.Traditionally WiFi runs on the 2.4 GHz frequency range, but that's not the only frequency it can work on. Its focus is 802.11 wireless LANs, with tools available to sniff wireless packets, intercept them and log traffic, manage wireless drivers, recover lost keys, and detect issues and crack WPA and WEP.Īircrack-ng was originally designed for Linux but its functionality has been extended to include Windows, OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and eComStation 2. This is an open source product available from SecTools. And pen testers can use it to attack and crack WPA and WEP protocols. Capture and injection of WiFi cards can be done to verify their performance. You can use it to monitor WiFi security, capture data packets and export them to text files for additional analysis. Key features: Aircrack-ng is a set of utilities for analyzing WiFi networks for weaknesses.

Type of tool: Wireless network analyzer and attacker

This is good news for veteran security professionals, but an open-source Linux orientation may challenge those more used to proprietary tools running on Windows platforms. All the various tools within it use a command line interface and are set up for scripting. Aircrack-ng OverviewĪircrack-ng is the go-to tool for analyzing and cracking wireless networks. See our complete list of top penetration testing tools.

How to use aircrack windows