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Wireless:

Exploitation

WEP/WPA cracking, evil twins, EAP harvest, rogue APs, WPS attacks

13 guides Updated Mar 29, 2026

What this phase covers

Exploitation uses confirmed weaknesses to gain access, recover credentials, or capture sensitive data. The techniques here range from passive traffic capture on open networks to active attacks that recover passphrases, harvest domain credentials, and intercept client traffic through rogue APs.

The attack path depends on what vulnerability discovery confirmed. For WPA2 PSK targets, start with handshake capture or check whether a PMKID was already captured by hcxdumptool during enumeration, then move to cracking. For WPS targets, try Pixie Dust first — it completes in seconds if the AP is vulnerable — before falling back to PIN brute-force. For enterprise networks, EAP credential harvesting with hostapd-mana is the primary attack, followed by MSCHAPv2 cracking. For captive portal networks, credential harvesting via a rogue portal is covered alongside the evil twin AP setup that drives clients to it.

Attack path quick reference

Open networkcapture plaintext traffic immediately, no credentials needed.
WEP networkIV collection + aircrack-ng, accelerate with ARP replay if traffic is low.
WPA2 PSK, PMKID capturedcrack directly with hashcat -m 22000, no deauth needed.
WPA2 PSK, no PMKIDdeauth + handshake capture, then crack.
WPS unlocked, Ralink/RealtekPixie Dust first.
WPS unlocked, other chipsetPIN brute-force.
WPA Enterprise, PEAP, no cert validationhostapd-mana rogue RADIUScrack MSCHAPv2.
Joined networkARP spoof + intercept with bettercap.

Flows into

Once access is gained, post-exploitation covers decrypting previously captured traffic with the recovered passphrase and mapping the internal network from the wireless foothold.