Wireless Hack - Computers & Internet

Although it's illegal to explain 'how' to do such things, and it's not really an actual 'problem' as such ;-) it can avoid a lot of wondering and searching for the impossible, to know that there is no magic or fast way to enter any computer system - unlike what is shown in films with people guessing as passwords and entry codes. WiFi password systems are some of the best to date, but all such things are based on the only several possible methods we have available. In WiFi situations, you need to 'grab' a packet of data, and then decode that to find it's specific algorithm.

All security now is based on complex maths algorithms, with numbers being coded and recoded and coded some more. The basic idea being that trying to decode it is like going through a secret door, that leads to 2 doors, and they each lead to 4 doors, then 8 then 16 and so on.
You can't easily know if you enter any one door, if you took the right one or not. And when you get to the final row of doors, well you could be 3000 doors to the left of what you wanted (that's the premise of such things anyway).

Films show people guessing at passwords (never going to happen really), and others show amazing software that reals off a list of numbers counting down each secret digit, but again, it's just for entertainment. It takes most computers days/weeks/months to run through all the possibilities of even short 8 alphanumeric calculations - that's why most password setups like for email always insist on having at least 8 characters - makes it too much hassle right from the start.

There are usually backdoor codes on just about everything, because the software engineers need to be able to test the system and still quickly get in as needed, but a good engineer will always remove that option once the full system has been checked and passed as safe.