Sniffing/Cracking Password using ARP Poisoning in Cain and Abel
Sniffing/Cracking Passwords using ARP Poisoning in Cain and Abel
(For the video tutorial scroll down)
I’ve been doing some wireless sniffing lately, just for fun and figured I would post a detailed video and text tutorial on how to sniff packets using Cain and Abel. To start off, lets answer the question of what is a ‘packet’.
A packet is a formatted block of data carried by a packet mode computer across a network.
To put it simply, packets are pieces of data that fly around and get accepted or denied by routers and other communication devices. What we will be doing is ‘fooling’ all the computers on your wireless network into thinking that YOUR computer is the router, hence making all the data packets go through your computer. To do this we will be using a program called cain and abel. Just follow that link and download the application, I will go through it more in the video tutorial.
After we have intercepted the data packets, cain will attempt to analyze and decrypt them and if anyone on your network enters a password of some sort into a login box, those username and password packets will be transmitted back to your computer so that you can basically ‘crack’ those passwords. Sometimes they will show up as hashs and that will require you enter do some hash cracking which I will very briefly cover. Most of the time however, they will show up as cleartext so that you can just copy and paste them into wherever they belong. And there you go.
Okay, the following is going to be a brief outline of steps involved:
1. Open cain
2. Click on the sniffer tab and turn on sniffer (button next to open on the toolbar)
3. Make sure the hosts tab is selected down the bottom.
4. Right click > scan mac address’
5. Click on APR tab down the bottom
6. Click + sign and add your networks.
7. Start poisoning
8. Click on passwords down the bottom and wait for passwords to come in.
If you didn’t understand something, feel free to comment your question below or email me.

November 25th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Hi, I down-loaded Cain, and have been playing around with it for a few hours. Now I am wondering how to get a password from a remote computer. Any hints? I can get the ip address from the most recent e-mail (pointofmail.com) but can’t retrieve or even enter the ip address
November 25th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
By remote, do you mean a computer in your network, or outside?
Again, it depends what type of password you are trying to crack, but when it comes to external computers it gets a little bit tricky.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:10 am
the passwords and sign ins come up as numbers, they dont show up on the screen
January 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
whenever i poison another pc on network,the poison attack shuts down the internet connection on the attacked pc.this way i cant retreive any info.appreciate any help ty
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Hello.. i install cain but on the wireless tab the Lock on channel, WPA-PSK Auths, WEP Injection, and TxRate (Mbps) are all dissable.. can you help me how to enable it or to configure this.. tanx
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
i cant download program
April 27th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
ok when i look on the videos and when they click sniff like things come up, when i do it nothing comes up like there are no ip or orther computers in world…why is that
June 5th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Hi !! I’m wondering if it is possible to crack a password from an internet site. The site shows the username and password to log in. I tried with Brutus and it seems that the software does not recognize the URL. Is it possible to get the hashes for such a site with Cain and Abel or other software. thank you for your precious help !!
October 17th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Hey, very interesting I would like some info on how to obtain a password for a wireless network.
I am using a laptop will this still work using this program, if so can you give me detail steps on how to do it.
Thanks in advance
November 14th, 2009 at 7:50 am
@Andre: The best program I have found for WEP/WPA cracking is AirCrack-PTW. I haven’t tried it in Windows but works like a champ in Ubuntu (linux). In order to crack a wireless network you must have a wireless chipset that is able to inject packets. On the aircrack site there is a list of supported chipsets and instructions on how to see your chipset.
November 28th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
using cain and abel when i scan mac address nothing comes up, how can i rightly configure this
December 18th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Is it possible to crack a wireless network’s passphrase with Cain? I have a laptop with no internet connection at home, but there are multiple secured wireless networks around me with a simple WEP encoding. The only thing stopping me from getting in is when it asks me for the “passphrase”. I want to know how to use Cain to crack the passphrase…
December 19th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Hey people, i have downloaded cain and had a look on some of the tutorials on youtube. My problems lies within finding IP’s. I enable sniffer, go onto the sniffer tab and click the “+” and then click ok. It goes through what it has to do, then you SHOULD have ips in the box, but i dont. Someone help please…
Regards
December 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Hey i followed the steps you listed but i had a question about scaning the mac addreses.
How do i findout what i should put in the range?