Cain and Abel – Hacking Local Area Networks

This is another tool that is favored in extracting or recovering passwords. Note very carefully, Cain and Abel is a "PASSWORD RECOVERY" tool, use it carefully.

(THIS POST IS FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY)

Before I start, there are a few requirements.

• Download Cain and Abel from www.oxid.it
  
• Should have a switched LAN. (Most ISPs other than BSNL provide broadband via LAN, e.g. SIFY, HATHWAY, local Cable internet connections)
  
• Any Microsoft Windows Operating System.
  

If you are not sure about being on a switched network, continue the steps, until you find out.

1. Download and install Cain and Able from the link given above.
   
2. Start Cain and Abel (requires admin privileges in Vista), go to the sniffer tab, click on the configure menu, select your NIC, check 'start sniffer on startup', press 'OK'.
   
3. Click on the 'Start / Stop Sniffer' (the 2^nd) button on the toolbar. Now click the blue '+' (plus) sign (this is the 7^th button on the toolbar). Check 'All Tests' and click 'OK'.
   
4. After the scan is complete, if you are on a switched network then, you must be able to see many IP and MAC addresses in this pane. If you don't see any IP other than your own, probably you are not on a switched network.
   
5. Notice the tabs on the bottom, HOSTS, APR, Routing, Passwords, and VoIP. You are currently on the HOSTS tab, select the APR tab click on the 'top pane' and click the 'blue +' (7^th on toolbar).
   







6. Now you will again see the IP & MAC address (in the left pane) you saw in Step 5. From this list, select your 'Gateway IP', (this will mostly be something like 192.xxx.xxx.1 or 10.xxx.xxx.1 etc; check your network properties for more info on gateway.) after selecting your 'Gateway IP Address' (now some IP will appear on the right); drag and select all the entries in the right pane, and click 'OK'.
   
7. Now click on the 'Start/Stop APR' (the 3^rd) button on the toolbar. You will see 'HALF ROUTING' and 'FULL ROUTING' entries in the lower pane.
   
8. Now go to the Passwords tab on the bottom. Slowly you will see passwords appearing in this section; most will be under HTTP.
   

The password section gives you full details on the capture, including Username, password, URL, etc. Any person who was online during the time you completed Steps 3 – 5, will be affected, and you will have access to their passwords.

Beware: What this program does is send all the traffic through your computer, so the LAN speeds slow down drastically. On my home network, LAN transfer speeds reduced from 10MB/s to 100Kb/s in 10 minutes.

Also according to me, any network can be efficiently analyzed with a combination of 'Cain and Abel' (http://www.oxid.it/cain) and 'Wireshark' (http://www.wireshark.org/).

Remote commands via TweetMyPC

For some reason you have stepped away from the workstation, or let us say you are AFK (Away From Keyboard) and you suddenly remember that some of the windows currently open contain confidential information which you don't want to share with anyone at all. What do you do now ? Going back is not an option.

This kind of situation might put us in a bad corner sometimes, but now we have a solution, TweetMyPC.



This handy app is connected to you twitter.com account and keeps checking for status updates on twitter every minute. TweetMyPC required credentials to a gmail account as well, to send you file list, process list, etc.

Following are the commands that can be typed at the twitter status:

• shutdown: Shuts down your PC
  
• reboot: Reboots PC
• lock: Lock PC
  
• standby: PC on standby mode.
  
• hibernate: PC on hibernate mode
  
• screenshot: Take screen shot and send link
  
• getprocesslist: Send process list to gmail
  
• kill : Kill process
  
• download : Download url
  
• getfilelist : Get list of files from drive
  
• getfile : Send specified file to gmail

You may think if you have access to another computer to do all this, then might as well use one of those remote desktop tools. Well, I'd say you are not wrong TweetMyPC may not be able to accomplish certain things that might be done by remote desktop, like watching a movie that's stored on your computer while you are away (beats me why anyone would do this kind of stuff). My point here is you could use a 64kbps connection with TweetMyPC.

But what if you can't find a machine?

Twitter allows commands to be sent by mail or SMS to change your status, which means you don't need a computer, even a cell phone will do the trick.

I'll make a post on how to update twitter by SMS soon.

Team Viewer

Have you ever wanted help for some issues on your computer from someone who can not physically come and help you ?

Team Viewer is a remote desktop tool which allows you to easily share desktop and transfer files over the Internet, make a presentation of products,services and solutions. You can remote control partners desktop to give online assistance, or you can show your screen to a customer; all with no concerns about firewalls, IP addresses and NAT.

It is not even compulsory to install. When you run the setup and accept their terms and conditions they give you the choice to either install or run the software. All you have to do is run the program on the two different computers you want to connect and you can use it as you wish, be it a presentation,remote help or transferring files. Team Viewer offers a free version for non-commercial use too.

I suggest you also try it, this tool is worth a try. You can find it at www.teamviewer.com.