Author Archives: lantean

Bruteforcing WEP Keys

Today… we’ll take a look at WEP key-breaking. We’ll use a linux live-cd distribution called backtrack. It’s a linux distribution bundled with a load of hacking / cracking tools. It’s free, and it’s pretty cool.

So… first step… download and burn it!.
I’ll assume you know how to boot it and launch a bash terminal. Let’s begin from there.
We’re gonna use two command-line tools: airodump-ng and aircrack-ng. So… let’s open a terminal, and type the following commands:

airmon-ng start [interface]
(Your interface is probably gonna be called something like wlan0...  you can check the available interfaces with ifconfig command).
airodump-ng wlan0 --write OUTPUT-FILE

What’s going on here?. Airmon will set your wifi card into promiscuous mode. Which means that it won’t just let you see packets sent to your own mac address. Instead, you’re gonna need to monitor all of the traffic in the air.

On top of that, airodump-ng will dump into a file all of the traffic recorded. Why?. In order to successfully crack a WEP key, you need to gather at least 10k ‘Initialization Vectors’. We’re not gonna get into details of what is that… not in this post. But the point is that.. wanna crack a WEP… need a lot of traffic.

Let’s go on. Launch a second bash terminal, and type the following:

aircrack-ng OUTPUT-FILE-01.cap

This second tool is gonna ask you which network is it that you wanna crack, and it’ll try to break the WEP encryption. If it’s unable to do it with the current traffic log, you’ll get a message saying something like ‘try with 10000 IVs’, or ‘try with 15000’.

It’s just a matter of time now…

Santana goes Shapeshifter

I’m not really sure how this works. It’s as if a lot of musicians wanted to put out, all together, new records. It’s pretty cool to find out that there are new albums of your favorite artists… yeah!.

I’ve been listening to Santana’s latest album, Shapeshifter. As a friend of mine always says, he’s been playing the same notes for the last 30 years, or so. But anyways, he’s great at doing it. So i really recommend you check it out..!

My favorite track, for whatever reason, is called ‘Dom’. He’s just a genius!.

Tracklisting: 
01. Shape Shifter 6:15
02. Dom 3:51
03. Nomad 4:48
04. Metatron 2:38
05. Angelica Faith 5:02
06. Never The Same Again 5:01
07. In The Light Of A New Day 5:06
08. Spark Of The Divine 1:02
09. Macumba In Budapest 4:01
10. Mr. Szabo 6:19
11. Eres La Luz 4:50
12. Canela 5:22
13. Ah, Sweet Dancer 3:08

Twitter iOS SDK

I recently had to integrate one of my apps with Twitter. Let me say you something. I HATE TWITTER guys. Why?. Because everything is soooo complicated. Although there is a direct integration between Twitter and iOS 5, they have made it really hard for developers.

Why?. If you need to post tweets, backend side, you need to ask for ‘Reverse Auth‘ permissions.. and it’s not something that can be done automatically. They have to personally approve this.

So… if you’re like me, stressed dealing with those guys, check this out: https://github.com/bengottlieb/Twitter-OAuth-iPhone.

What is that?. A nice iOS library, which implements OAuth authentication against twitter servers. I’m tuning it, just a little bit. There is a ‘PIN’ mechanism implemented right there, which i’m not particular fond of. But besides that, it’ll help you open a WebView as a modalViewController, and authenticate the user into twitter.

Not the best i’ve imagined.. but the problem is solved. My idea is to implement a hybrid. If the user has no credentials stored in iOS 5, then i’ll fall back to this framework. Makes sense.. right?.

OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion System Requirements

Since the Preview 4 has just been released, and we’re getting close to the final release, i thought it would be a good idea to check out what are the system requirements for Mountain Lion.

Well, let me say you something. They’re tight. Yeah. Most of you are probably gonna need to buy new hardware, if you still wanna run this big cat. Mountain Lion needs..:

  • 64-Bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better required
  • Ability to boot into OS X 64-bit kernel
  • Advanced GPU chipset required
  • Internet connection required to download and install OS X 10.8
Long short story, the following hardware will be able to run 10.8:
  • MacBook Pro – 13″ from mid 2009 or later, 15″ from late 2007 and newer, 17″ from late 2007 and newer
  • MacBook Air – late 2008 and newer
  • iMac – models from mid 2007 and newer
  • MacBook – 13″ aluminum from 2008, 13″ from 2009 and newer
  • Mac Mini – early 2009 and newer
  • Mac Pro – early 2008 models and newer
  • XServe – early 2009 models and newer

Anything else is ‘deprecated’. So… where are you standing? do you need to spend money… or not?. (Excuses, excuses… i wanna buy a new Mac Retina!).

Make OSX Speak anything!

This is a nice trick, which can be used in any console script. There is a command named ‘say’, which is the one that does all of the magic. You can use it this way:

echo lantean | say

What’s interesting about this is that you have different voice tone variations. To get a full list, you can do this:

lantean$ say -v ?
Agnes               en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Albert              en_US    #  I have a frog in my throat. No, I mean a real frog!
Alex                en_US    # Most people recognize me by my voice.
Bad News            en_US    # The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of a fast approaching train.
Bahh                en_US    # Do not pull the wool over my eyes.
Bells               en_US    # Time flies when you are having fun.
Boing               en_US    # Spring has sprung, fall has fell, winter's here and it's colder than usual.
Bruce               en_US    # I sure like being inside this fancy computer
Bubbles             en_US    # Pull the plug! I'm drowning!
Cellos              en_US    # Doo da doo da dum dee dee doodly doo dum dum dum doo da doo da doo da doo da doo da doo da doo
Deranged            en_US    # I need to go on a really long vacation.
Fred                en_US    # I sure like being inside this fancy computer
Good News           en_US    # Congratulations you just won the sweepstakes and you don't have to pay income tax again.
Hysterical          en_US    # Please stop tickling me!
Junior              en_US    # My favorite food is pizza.
Kathy               en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Pipe Organ          en_US    # We must rejoice in this morbid voice.
Princess            en_US    # When I grow up I'm going to be a scientist.
Ralph               en_US    # The sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.
Trinoids            en_US    # We cannot communicate with these carbon units.
Vicki               en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Victoria            en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Whisper             en_US    # Pssssst, hey you, Yeah you, Who do ya think I'm talking to, the mouse?
Zarvox              en_US    # That looks like a peaceful planet.

So far, so good. Now, if you actually wanna use one of those voices, you need to specify the -v parameter, just like this:

lantean$ echo "Alala la la long long le long long long" | say -v "Hysterical"