You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.
Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise.
Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain't what you'd call "news." But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here's how it goes.
What You'll Need
Unless you're a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don't have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here's what you'll need:
- A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You'll need a wireless adapter that's capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). You won't go wrong with the Alfa, but do your research. There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
- A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of security testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn't work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
- A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
- Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient.
To crack WEP, you'll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack's built-in command line. It's right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands.
First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces:
airmon-ng
The only one I've got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface).
Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below.
airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)
If you don't get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won't work with this particular crack. If you do, you've successfully "faked" a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.
Now it's time to pick your network. Run:
airodump-ng (interface)
To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else.
Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you've got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.
Now we're going to watch what's going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run:
airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)
Where (channel) is your network's channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose "yoyo," which is the network's name I'm cracking.
You'll get output like what's in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command:
aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)
Here the ESSID is the access point's SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring "Association successful" message with that smiley face.
You're almost there. Now it's time for:
aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
Here we're creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here's the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the "#Data" column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it's only at 854.)
Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won't work if it doesn't. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many.
Once you've collected enough data, it's the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you've collected:
aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)
Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it's the one with .cap as the extension.
If you didn't get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this:
The WEP key appears next to "KEY FOUND." Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.
With this article I set out to prove that cracking WEP is a relatively "easy" process for someone determined and willing to get the hardware and software going. I still think that's true, but unlike the guy in the video below, I had several difficulties along the way. In fact, you'll notice that the last screenshot up there doesn't look like the others—it's because it's not mine. Even though the AP which I was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before it was complete. After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as a live CD and a virtual machine), I still haven't captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key.
So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and if you're on deadline—Murphy's Law almost guarantees it won't work if you're on deadline.
To see the video version of these exact instructions, check out this dude's YouTube video.
Got any experience with the WEP cracking courtesy of BackTrack? What do you have to say about it? Give it up in the comments.
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, is tired of typing commands that start with "air." Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
It's disappointing that 
Show the path bar. From Finder's View menu, check off "Show Path Bar" to turn on a clickable "breadcrumb" file path bar at the bottom of your Finder window, as shown. There you can click on any of the parent folders up the path of your current folder to navigate to it.
Add the path button to Finder's toolbar. Similarly, the Path button isn't on Finder's toolbar by default, but you can add it. To do so, Cmd+click Finder's toolbar (or chrome, the silver top to each window, and choose "Customize Toolbar." From there, drag the button named Path onto Finder (and make any other customizations you like; there are quite a few of them). Then, you can click on the Path button to get a drop-down "steps" view of the current folder's full path, as shown.
Quick Look inside folders By default, if you select a folder and tap on the Spacebar, Quick Look shows you a blue folder icon with some details about how many items are inside. But 
Preview .zip file contents with Quick Look. Similarly, another plug-in does the same for .zip archives. With the 
Easily tell the difference between your backup FireWire drive, thumb drive, and camera's memory card with custom drive icons for each. Grab an icon—like from 
Unix-heads who need access to OS X's hidden files and folders—the ones that start with a dot—can show them 
This trick is a little hacky, but it gets the job done on busy Finder sidebars. Using 
One last Finder setting that's highly informative is the "Show item info" option (from Finder's Action menu, choose View Options, and it's a checkbox there). This will display the file size, for images, the dimensions, and for folders, the number of items inside below each in thumbnail view. If you keep your hard drive on your desktop, it will tell you how much space you have and how much is free, as pictured.
Now that we know 
The one feature of Leopard's Finder which is super-useful for most common document types is Quick Look. Select a file, tap the keyboard, and bang, you're peering into the contents of a file, whether it's a Word document, PDF, or image. In Windows 7 Explorer you can hit the Alt+P keyboard combination to preview the contents of a file in an embedded panel inside the Explorer interface (too small). This preview feature doesn't support nearly the amount of filetypes that Quick Look does and lacks Quick Look's separate window resizing and paging capabilities.
The new Windows 7 taskbar is no doubt the best improvement interface-wise to your system. Now you can pin programs to your taskbar (ironically, Dock-style), but you've also got 
The Mac menu bar is an odd bird: it's fixed to the top of your Mac's screen with no easy way to hide it, and programs affix their icons there without asking you (or by burying the option to hide them somewhere in the individual program's preferences). The default date and time display isn't that informative, either. Compared to 
Not too much has changed with Windows 7's built-in backup utility: it's a plain old wizard that asks you to choose a backup drive, choose the files you want to back up (along with an option to make an OS system image), and set the schedule. It's buried somewhere in the Control Panel and the whole business of using it is boring and easy to ignore. But Leopard's Time Machine? Nothing beats its 
I admit it: I'm currently deep in a love affair with Windows 7's Aero Peek feature, which does all this beautiful thumbnail previewing and window clearing and docking—but not in an overwrought, show-offy way, more in a smooth, utilitarian, why-doesn't-every-computer-do-this way. Currently Mac OS X doesn't offer a feature that one could compare to Aero Peek. Update: Reader 
If you've used a computer for any significant amount of time, you've also probably facepalmed after spilling some potentially sticky substance into the recesses of your keyboard. (If you haven't, your day will come.) Here's how to save your keyboard after that spill.
I had a chance to try Android's latest firmware update, 
First things first: the "soft" touchscreen keyboard won't be a big deal to G1 owners who are used to the flip-out full keyboard, but it does come in handy when you want to text message quickly in portrait mode. Just tap a text area to enable the keyboard, which suggests words as you type. You can enable a satisfying old-school typing sound as you tap, and like the iPhone, tapping and holding keys like e and a offer other options (like the letters with various accents).
The second biggie is the ability to take video with the phone's camera. Just hit the menu button to switch to video mode. Another nice camera update is the on-screen shutter button, and image thumbnails on screen while you shoot. You can upload video you take with Android directly to YouTube, too. The Cupcake changelog says that the camera also got performance upgrades but it's still pretty sluggish for me (especially rendering photo gallery thumbnails.)
Most usefully, you can now check off multiple messages in list view and perform batch actions, like label, archive, or delete them. There's the mobile webapp "floaty bar" which stays docked at the bottom of the screen as you scroll. Nice.
Another Gmail-specific feature now available in the native client which I was happy to see because I use it all the time: the ability to mute a conversation.
SMS (and MMS) got a subtle redesign, faster scrolling, the ability to detach files from MMS messages, and adorable robotic emoticons shown here.
Android's web browser also got quite a bit of TLC in Cupcake. It got a faster JavaScript engine, and few useful interface additions, like a "Most Visited" and History options in the Bookmarks area.
The browser also got a Find on page option and the ability to select and copy text from a web page. The bad news: You've got to hold down the Shift key while using the trackball to select text on page and click the trackball again to copy it to clipboard, which is a pretty clumsy interface.
Finally, you can now see a list of running processes on your Android device. It's kind of buried
My fellow Android user 
With 
Accessing data from multi-booting operating systems is easier. If you're both curious but apprehensive about upgrading to Windows 7, you can have your operating system cake and eat it too by dual (or triple) booting your system. If you do decide to 
Size matters. (And so do good backups.) When you create your data partition, make sure you give both your operating system and your documents folder as much room as they need. While you can resize partitions after you've created them, it's not as easy on older versions of Windows and can nuke your whole drive if something goes wrong. So size does matter: make the right decision up front. Along those same lines, a separate partition for your data doesn't mean you still don't need to do 
Add another physical hard drive to your PC. For true separation of operating system and your data, you want to crack open your PC's case and 
Now that you've seen what's inside 
The bag: After years of shoulder-dislocating messenger bags and sub-par backpacks, I finally got this not-cheap-but-hardy Booq bag as a birthday gift. 
The Kindle and phone: Packing more than one book or magazine leads to backaches and an overstuffed bag that won't fit under the airplane seat in front of me, but I can take dozens of books and newspapers with me on my Kindle. While it sucks that you have to wait till you're at a cruising altitude to start reading, I've been 
The analog notebook: Like Adam, I don't need a fancy leather-bound notebook. I go through a single small spiral notebook every two months, so I usually just pick up a cheap one at the drugstore. I don't skimp when it comes to pens, though: I'm a sucker for the tiny and shiny 
The repurposed iPod backup drive: This antique, second-gen iPod is the oldest and most unusual thing I carry on long trips. This iPod is over seven years old and the battery can no longer hold a charge long enough to play an entire song, but when it's plugged in it works like a charm. So I've repurposed it into a travel backup drive. Since I work on the road, I worry about the possibility of my notebook's hard drive dying while I'm away from my regular Time Machine drive back home. So I plug in this sucker (wrapped in a bright rubber iSkin, also from back in the day) with its FireWire cable, and sync 20GB of my most important documents to it while I'm out of town. This way if the laptop does die I can dash into a Mac store in any city, plug in this old beast, and get what I need without worrying about waiting for a long Mozy or Dropbox download. (Yes, a regular old thumb drive would get this job done, too—but it wouldn't qualify for the Computer History Museum.)
The little things: If I'm doing a presentation at a conference, I always take my MacBook's IR remote and the DVI to SVGA adapter (for older projectors). I've always got an extra pair of earbuds. Like Adam, if I've got a travel companion, I also take a headphone splitter so we can both listen to music or watch a movie on the plane. I like to take photos at conferences and on family visits, so I take my old Canon Elph (not pictured) and my Eye-Fi card and reader so I can configure the nearest Wi-Fi network to automatically download my photos as I snap them. Also, an extra USB cable and Mac plug adapter never hurt.
A few years back you dropped significant cash to switch over from the virus-laden world of Windows to a shiny new Mac, but over time it's gotten slow and crufty. Let's clean it up.
First things first. If your Mac is acting like a petulant three-year-old, dragging its feet, crossing its arms, and refusing to do what you ask in any reasonable amount of time, it's time to fire up the Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities). Here you'll see a list of running applications and processes. Sort the columns shown in the screenshot to find out what apps are hogging the most CPU time (Firefox, in this case), what apps are for Intel or PowerPC (it's a good idea to use Intel-only apps on Intel Macs), and what apps are running at all. If there are processes running for software you don't need, note them down. Also, if an app is a runaway CPU and memory hog, quit it and restart for immediate relief.
Whether or not the Activity Monitor is showing processes you don't recognize, it's a good idea to audit what programs start up automatically when you log onto your Mac. In System Preferences, Accounts (I know, unintuitive placement), click on the Login Items tab. From there, make sure each and every app listed is something you need and use. If it isn't? Just select it and click the minus (-) sign. (Rule of thumb: Generally you want to keep things called "SomethingHelper" where Something is an app you use, like iTunes or Growl, as shown.)
But, in case you're a neat freak, you want to check out the likes of 
Now it's time to make sure your disks are in tip-top shape, and luckily, you can do this without any extra software. Simply run Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities) to verify and repair disk permissions (which determine what apps can do what with what files on your Mac) and verify and repair the disk itself. These operations take some time, and you can't do them while other applications are running, so set 'em in motion before you head out to lunch or to grab coffee.
To run some more hardcore and detailed maintenance tasks, download the free 
While you're on a cleaning spree, figure out exactly what's taking up all that space on your Mac with a visual tool that maps what's what. 
This should go without saying, but the more memory your Mac has, the snappier it will be. If you're thinking about an upgrade and you've got a MacBook, check out 
Windows only: If you need your Unix 
Google rolled out some changes to the HTML that runs Gmail in the last few days that rendered several of 
Minutes ago I posted an update to the 
My favorite addition to this new version 0.7.3 is the awesome 
This succinct set of workday guidelines is a nice blueprint for getting productive on the important stuff and ruthless about cutting the crap. Written on a 
If Apple knows how to do anything, it's take tech you've already seen and make it flashier and more fun to use. The new 
When you're in edit mode, use the X's to remove a site and the pins to fix a site to a permanent position. On the lower right hand side, use the Small, Medium, and Large buttons to set how many thumbnails you see at once (and their size).
You can also drag and drop thumbnails in the Top Sites view to appear where you want; watch all the others in the grid move aside to make room for the new positioning all smooth and musical-chair-like.
With Chrome in the background and Safari up front on the left, check out how the buttons on the right side of the address bar look almost exactly the same. Safari changes things up slightly in two ways: the close tab button is on the left side of the tab, and that grippy handle on the right is a visual indicator that you can grab a tab and drag it to a new window, into another, or just into another position (also like Chrome).
Here's what dragging a tab out of a window in Safari looks like; this is the one visual effect where Chrome (which offers a larger page preview during the drag action) actually does a nicer job.
The top version is Safari's default font rendering, which looks just like Firefox or Chrome (a bit pixelly around the edges). On the bottom I've turned on Safari's font smoothing and the results are like butter.
To turn on font-smoothing, in Safari 4's preferences dialog (Ctrl+, to get there), go to the Appearance tab and choose the appropriate option from the drop-down, as shown.
Customize your toolbar: To get rid of that "Report bug" button or add the handy Zoom or AutoFill buttons, you can customize your Safari toolbar in the same fashion you do Firefox. From the settings menu (that "Cog" button on the right), choose "Customize toolbar." From there, drag and drop the buttons you want onto and off the toolbar.
As a fan of the entire XBMC project, any new release on any platform is exciting, but besides the original Xbox version, I've spent the most time with Plex. (Here's a 
Dozens of fancy point-and-click task managers promise to organize your to-do list, but so often power users find that nothing outdoes that trusty old classic: the 
If this video clip isn't clear enough for you, try this 
One of the niftiest Firefox add-ons to come out of Mozilla Labs is 
For example, you can search Amazon by typing am, which will highlight amazon-search, then hit Space and type a word, like Lifehacker. Inside the Ubiquity panel, you'll get your results, as shown.
Invoke Ubiquity and type check Tuesday to see what events are on your calendar that day, as shown. (In the screenshot, I'm checking out a specific date—March 2.)
If you're a Gmail user, Ubiquity knows your contact list. To email a link to the web page you're currently looking at, try the email check this out! to adam command, as shown. You'll get a choice of all the people in your contacts list who match the keyword adam. (Note: This feature is either a bit buggy or I'm crazy, because Adam's address should be the first choice in my case but it's not. Hey, Ubiquity is still beta.)
Today is my last day as site lead at Lifehacker, so I'm taking off my distanced reporter hat to get all mushy, personal, and behind-the-scenes on you. Come in and grab a seat.
Throughout November and December, my colleagues at Gawker Media and I designed the personality behind Lifehacker, the person who would become the site's mascot. It would be a "she," of course, because I am. The female take on tech would define the voice of the site, but subtly, without any pink "you go girl" crap—just straight talk from someone helpful and knowledgeable but not pandering, someone focused not on the shiny but on the useful, someone brisk and futuristic. We imagined her as a spaceship flight attendant or pilot of sorts. (One of the first sketches of that early conception of our gal is on the right.) Our design team created the final Lifehacker mascot based on this persona. "What color should the site theme be?" our designers asked. I'd just read a book called Opening the Xbox, which described how Microsoft developed the popular console, including their color choices. "Green," I said. "People associate it with technology."
During my tenure as site lead, Lifehacker started at 0 and grew to 33 million pageviews a month. Like most web sites, we measure our performance by our traffic charts. But that's not the true indicator of Lifehacker's success. What I'm most proud of at this site is the high level of goodwill and useful knowledge that passes between the people who read and write here. We editors have always tried to be positive and helpful to set an example for readers. It worked. Compare any comment thread at Lifehacker to a similar one at any other tech site, and you'll see the difference is the knowledge and the generosity of most of the discourse. It's the conversations that make Lifehacker magical. While lots of web site editorial tears stuff to pieces, my goal with Lifehacker was to help our readers out, make their day a little easier.
Mac OS X only: You've already heard about the 
Microsoftie Brandon LeBlanc admits that the Windows 7 beta release scramble "was not ideal" and says the company will extend its availability beyond the 2.5M cap until January 24th.
Reader 
You'd think that getting soundly beaten by Google and Yahoo over and over in the online space would mean that Microsoft would take the web a little more seriously. You'd be wrong.
It's Friday afternoon and you know the drill—this comment thread is now open, so dive right in.
So you survived your company layoffs but now you're shouldering more responsibility for no more pay. If work is a giant stressfest these days, Fortune magazine's advice columnist Anne Fisher has some tips.
LH: Your book advises readers to focus only on the essential and cut out the rest. But most people with crazed, busy lives might say that everything they do IS essential—to pay the bills, to raise their children, to please the boss. When you audit your daily life, how do you know what's really non-essential? What's the criteria?
You'll need to sign into your free Pandora account to get started and see your stations. Make a new recommendation-driven station based on an artist; check out the suggest-as-you-tap search drop-down. 
Once a song starts playing, you can give it the thumbs up or thumbs down (which informs Pandora's future recommendations), or tap the up arrow to get more options, like...
The ability to bookmark the song or artist, buy the track from iTunes, or share your station via email. 
Turn your device to get into Cover Flow view, which works just like native iTunes (though I noticed a little flickering in the background album covers in my test).
Tap on the top right button to get artist details (shown here) and song details (shown below).
When you're wondering why Pandora included a recommendation in your station, the song info will tell you. 
The 
A few weeks ago, Stephanie wanted to know what 
Windows only: Reader 
The new release of GarageBand '09 includes "Learn to Play"—piano and guitar lessons from artists like Norah Jones, Sarah McLachlan, and Sting, Gizmodo reports from their 
Our brothers in gadgetry are 
Hewlett-Packard launches a new buyback program that will give you money in exchange for your old, working gadgets and gear—any brand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or smartphone that still has some value.
When your toilet's got rings and lime scale stains and you've got no cleaning gear on hand, grab a can of Coke out of the fridge.
So you're back at work after the holidays and planning out your big projects of the year—time to print out Dave Seah's excellent compact calendar for 2009.
It's a new year and we've got some new changes happening around here: Mr. Adam Pash will take over as lead editor of Lifehacker on January 16th.
Buried in the fine print of many cellphone contracts is a bit about how you can transfer your plan to someone else—and you can find that someone online.
It's January 2nd, and you're munching on carrot sticks longing for that box of leftover holiday candy. Come on inside and we'll talk.