Preface

Wireless Networks have become ubiquitous in today's world. Millions of people use them worldwide every day at their homes, offices, and public hotspots to log on to the Internet and do both personal and professional work. Even though wireless makes life incredibly easy and gives us such great mobility, it comes with its risks. In recent times, insecure wireless networks have been exploited to break into companies, banks, and government organizations. The frequency of these attacks has only intensified, as the network administrators are still clueless on how to secure wireless in a robust and foolproof way.

BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing: Beginner's Guide is aimed at helping the reader understand the insecurities associated with wireless networks, and how to conduct penetration tests to find and plug them. This is an essential read for those who would like to conduct security audits on wireless networks and always wanted a step-by-step practical guide for the same. As every wireless attack explained in this book is immediately followed by a practical demo, the learning is very complete.

We have chosen BackTrack 5 as the platform to test all the wireless attacks in this book. BackTrack, as most of you may already be aware, is the world's most popular penetration testing distribution. It contains hundreds of security and hacking tools, some of which we will use in this course of this book.