Twenty three dollars. That’s all this tiny pen-testing device will set you back. And there really isn’t much to it. [Kevin Bong] came up with the idea to use a Wifi router as a bridge to test a wired network’s security remotely. He grabbed a TP-Link TL-WR703N router, a low-profile thumb drive, and a cellphone backup battery; all cheaply available products.

No hardware hacking is necessary to connect the three components. The only other preparation needed is to reflash the router firmware with OpenWRT and load it up with common pen-testing software packages like Netcrack and Airhack.

[Kevin] calls this a drop box, because you find an Ethernet jack, plug it in, and drop it there. You can then connect to the router via Wifi and begin testing the wired network security measures. We’re sure images of espionage pop into your head from that description, but we’re certain this can be useful in other ways as well. If you ever find yourself with an Ethernet connection but no access to Wifi this is a quick way to setup an AP.

While we see plenty of security-related conferences here in the US, our friends across the pond were apparently anxious to hold a large-scale security conference of their own. At the helm of the first ever 44Con are DEF CON Goon [Adrian] and Penetration Tester [Steve Lord]. The pair are quite involved in London’s security community and are looking to bring like-minded individuals together over four days of security talks and workshops.

While 44Con’s list of speakers has been wrapped up, they are still looking for people to help run workshops on the 1st and 2nd of September. They are requesting that any hackers in the area drop them a line if interested.

Taking a look at their site, you can see that they have a nice selection of talks lined up catering to those on the business side of Information Security as well as deep technical discussions about threats and vulnerabilities. If you plan on hitting up the conference, be sure to let us know in the comments section.

[Ben Kurtz] is doing a little WEP cracking but in a bit of a different way than we’re used to. WEP cracking makes us think of war driving; driving around with your laptop open, looking for WiFi access points, and stopping to run some software when you find them. [Ben's] way is similar but different in one key way, he’s using an iPhone as the frontend.

This started as a way to find a use for some leftover equipment. He threw together a Linux box and loaded up Aircrack-ng, the software we often see used in penetration testing. To remove himself from shady-looking activities in public he coded a web interface using the Python package Turbogears. It uses screen, a program often used with SSH to run services concurrently in different terminals, with the option to disconnect without stopping the processes. Now it’s just a matter of parking the hardware near an AP, and doing the work in a browser on your mobile device. You can check out the script he wrote, as well as installation instructions, in his post linked above.

[Thanks Tech B.]

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[Nicholas Petty] has posted a guide to setting up your iPhone as a penetration tester. You already carry it around with you and, although not too beefy, it does have the hardware you need to get the job done. So if you’re not interested in building a drone or carrying around a boxy access point try this out. The first step is to jailbreak your device and setup OpenSSH so that you can tunnel in for the rest of the setup. From there the rest of the setup is just acquiring build tools and compiling pentesting programs like Aircrack-ng, Ettercap, Nikto2, and the Social Engineering Toolkit. You’ll be up to no good testing your wireless security in no time.

[Aaron] gave the latest on WiCrawl. The focus has been on the UI and usefulness for penetration testing. It’s got support for [David]s coWPAtty FPGA WPA cracking accelerator and some UI improvements. Even better, you can grab the WiCrawl module to put on a BackTrack Slax livecd from the project page. [Aaron] passed out some CD’s at the talk – I’ll update if the ISO gets posted.

And yes, I think I finally recovered from playing Hacker Jeopardy on team MRL. We held our own, but lost on the (LAME) final jeopardy question.