Hacking WEP Wireless Network using Fern WIFI Cracker(GUI)

WEP cracking can be done using Aircrack-ng in backtrack's terminal, the tutorial for which can be found here in case you want to learn all the commands involved. But this tutorial is for those who'd like to go for it the easy way and the easiest way is to use Fern Wifi Cracker which is a GUI(graphical user interface) for aircrack-ng.

More Tutorials on hacking Wireless Networks:
Hacking WEP Wireless Network using Backtrack.
Hacking WEP Wireless Netwok Without Using Dictionary.
Hacking WPA/WPA2 Wireless Network.

Fern Wifi cracker can be downloaded by searching for it on google or else it can be downloaded and installed using backtrack's terminal using this command:

wget http://fern-wifi-cracker.googlecode.com/files/Fern-Wifi-Cracker_1.2_all.deb
dpkg -i Fern-Wifi-Cracker_1.2_all.deb

After the setup is done open Fern Wifi Cracker using the following command:

/usr/share/applicationsFern_Wifi_Cracker.desktop

Update Fern Wifi cracker if required.

Follow all the steps carefully to successfully crack a WEP wireless network:

1. Click on the drop done menu to select the interface you'd like to work on, in my case it is wlan0

2. A popup will open within few seconds like this one:

Click on Ok button. The next part is optional, but it’s my personally experience that cracking a network with connected client is much easier than without. So if you'd like to try it as well follow the step mentioned below:

*Double click in any area of the main window
*A window named Access Point Scan Preferences will open
*Click the Enable XTerms checkbox
*Click the Ok button

3. If you did the part with enabling XTerm, two popups will appear. Since this tutorial deals with WEP cracking you can close the one named FERN (WPA SCAN). Now let’s have a look at the window called FERN (WEP SCAN). We need a accesspoint with a client connected to it. At the top half of the screen we see all the accesspoints in the area, and a lot of information about them. At the bottom of the window we see that a client is connected to a Accesspoint with the BSSID 00:13:f7:61:24:DA. If we compare this list in the top of the screen we will see that the name of this Accesspoint is SMC. So now we know that the accesspoint SMC have a client connected.

4. Now close the window FERN (WEP Scan) and click on the Wifi WEP button. A window named Fern WEP Attack will open. Click on the drop down list to select the access point you'd like to work on, in my case it is SMC.

5. Now click on the Attack button and wait until you get the following window displaying the key to the WEP wireless network you selected.