Time for action – speeding up the cracking process

We can proceed with the following steps:

1. We can pre-calculate the PMK for a given SSID and wordlist using the genpmk tool with the following command:

   genpmk -f <chosen wordlist> -d PMK-Wireless-Lab -s "Wireless Lab"
   

   This creates the PMK-Wireless-Lab file containing the pregenerated PMK:

   

2. We now create a WPA-PSK network with the passphrase abcdefgh (present in the dictionary we used) and capture a WPA-handshake for that network as we did with the previous exercise; alternatively, use the files we used previously. We now use Cowpatty to crack the WPA passphrase, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

   It takes approximately 7.18 seconds for Cowpatty to crack the key, using the precalculated PMKs.

3. We now use aircrack-ng with the same dictionary file, and the cracking process takes over 22 minutes. This shows how much we are gaining because of the precalculation.

What just happened?

We looked at various different tools and techniques to speed...