Getting
Started with the Basics
9
When you enter this command, you should see a short description of
the tool and guidance on how to use it. In some cases, you can use either
-h
or
-?
to get to the help file.
For instance, if I needed help using the hacker’s
best port-scanning tool, nmap, I would enter the following:
kali >
nmap -h
Unfortunately, although many applications support all three options
(
--help
,
-h
, and
-?
), there’s no guarantee the application you’re using will.
So if one option doesn’t work, try another.
Referencing Manual Pages with man
In
addition to the help switch, most commands and applications have a
manual (man) page with more information, such as a description and syn-
opsis of the command or application. You can
view a man page by simply
typing
man
before the command, utility, or application. To see the man page
for aircrack-ng, for example, you would enter the following:
kali >
man aircrack-ng
NAME
aircrack-ng - a 802.11 WEP /
WPA-PSK key cracker
SYNOPSIS
aircrack-ng [options] <.cap / .ivs file(s)>
DESCRIPTION
aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA/WPA2-PSK key cracking program.
It can recover the WEP key once enough encrypted packets have been
captured with airodump-ng. This part of the aircrack-ng suite deter-
mines the WEP key using two fundamental methods. The first method is
via the PTW approach (Pyshkin, Tews, Weinmann).
The main advantage
of the PTW approach is that very few data packets are required to
crack the WEP key. The second method is the FMS/KoreK method. The
FMS/KoreK method incorporates various statistical attacks to dis-
cover the WEP key and uses these in combination with brute forcing.
Additionally, the program offers a dictionary method for determining
the WEP key. For cracking WPA/WPA2
pre-shared keys, a wordlist (file
or stdin) or an airolib-ng has to be used.
This opens the manual for aircrack-ng, providing you with more
detailed information than the
help
screen.
You can scroll through this
manual file using the
enter
key, or you can page up and down using the
pg
dn
and
pg
up
keys, respectively; you can also use the arrow keys. To exit,
simply enter
