To reduce boredom, the hacker turns a virtual chicken breeding machine into a wifi hacking device

While hacking wifi is secondary and the main purpose is entertainment, it is not uncommon for a hacker to turn a virtual chicken machine into a wifi hack.

Most Wi-Fi networks today use the WPA2-PSK protocol to secure their networks. Although equipped with a higher encryption layer, but not impossible. The weakness of this protocol lies in the 4-way handshake process and hackers can take advantage of that to bypass this security layer.

Hackers can drop into a “Wifi bomb” to force all users to get out of the WiFi access point in a few seconds, and when reconnected, the hacker can collect leaked information from the process. handshake when connecting. From the collected information, hackers can brute force it to detect the Wifi password.

Pwnagotchi, wifi hacking device with cute face.

For security researchers like Simone Margaritelli and his companion, the hacker with the nickname hexwaxwing, it seems that the complicated process is still not difficult enough and they want to make the Wifi password hack a little more cool.

Perhaps that’s why they came up with a toy of the 90s: Tamagotchi, a virtual chicken breeding device that once caused a fever. And when refurbished with hacking Wifi components, they created Pwnagotchi – a Wifi bomb.

Pwnagotchi – a tool to hack wifi from toys of the 90s

The software for Pwnagotchi is now publicly posted on September 19. And the hackers showed that they are excited about this. Just about a month after its launch and barely promoting on Twitter, a community of hundreds of security researchers and hackers – fans of the software – were created. From here they can use it, edit, add plugins to it and help each other through the Slack chat application.

Pwnagotchi has been able to detect surrounding Wi-Fi networks and optimize the time it takes to collect leaked information from the handshake process in the Wifi network. To do so, they used a type of machine learning technique called “deep inforcement learning” – similar to the underlying technology of AI players playing Mario and AlphaGo.

The deep learning algorithm optimizes the parameters needed to collect as many handshake processes as possible. Each network is a little different in terms of specifications, and the way Pwnagotchi gathers information will depend on whether they’re on a busy street or in the office.

To run the software, you need a Raspberry Pi Zero W circuit, a MicroSD card with at least 8GB of memory and an external battery. If you want to see a cute face with lots of different expressions, you’ll need an extra 2-inch e-paper screen. In total, these items will cost you around US $ 60, at the time of this writing.

A game more entertaining for hackers than a professional hacking tool

Don’t think this screen doesn’t matter, for hexwaxwing, this expressive face is the most notable highlight of this project – after all, it’s Pwnagotchi.

“ I know adding this face will be a special attraction to many people, making them focus on making it fun. I dare assure you that a significant portion of users come here because of this cute face and will stay for AI. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of users aren’t really interested in collecting or cracking the Wifi handshake process. They just love the idea of ​​a Tamagotchi for hackers and exploit it for an existing playground everywhere – poorly secured wireless networks! It was wonderful . ”

Indeed, it gives hackers entertainment pleasure beyond its true feature: ” It forces me to walk more than take the subway .” Darren Martyn, a security researcher who lives in Berlin said he now owns three Pwnagotchi.

Margaritelli said he was not planning to turn Pwnagotchi into a tool for professional hackers. Instead, it is a learning tool for anyone interested in hacking. The technology underneath it is neither new nor illegal. In fact, this tool is restricted from causing a denial of service attack to the device it collects information.

” Its main goal is to motivate suppliers to adopt safer Wi-Fi (802.11w) technologies and act as an educational project for users to learn and entertain with it .” Margaritelli said know more.

Source : GenK