20 best wi-fi hacking tools

Wi-Fi is ubiquitous in 2025. And since many of the wireless networks we use every day are password-protected, a password is the most common way to secure them, including public-facing and business networks. 

Wireless hacking tools are designed to help secure wireless networks by revealing vulnerabilities in their passwords, encryption or configuration settings. As such, some are designed to help gain access to the network itself. Others provide information about the structure and traffic flowing over the network, which can be used to inform later attacks.  

Wireless networks are common in enterprise environments, making them a prime point of entry for penetration testers. Additionally, misconfigured wireless networks can be easily cracked, providing penetration testers with a great deal of valuable information about the network and its users.  

This article explores some of the most widely used tools for different aspects of wireless network hacking.  And once you’ve finished this article and you want to try beginning hacking techniques yourself, Infosec has created a free one-hour course and lab environment titled “Learn how to hack with AI.”  

Wireless networks and hacking 

Wireless networks are based on IEEE 802.11 standards defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for ad hoc networks or infrastructure networks. Infrastructure networks have one or more access points that coordinate the traffic between the nodes. But in ad hoc networks, there is no access point; each node connects in a peer-to-peer way. 

Two types of vulnerabilities can be found in the Wireless LAN. One is poor configuration, and the other is poor encryption. Poor configuration is caused by the network admin who manages the network. It may include a weak password, a lack of security settings, the use of default configurations and other user-related issues. 

Poor encryption is related to security keys used to protect the wireless network. These vulnerabilities exist because of issues in WEP or WPA. 

WEP and WPA 

WEP and WPA are the two main security protocols used in Wi-Fi LAN. WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, is a deprecated security protocol introduced in 1997 as a part of the original 802.11 standards. However, it was weak, and several serious vulnerabilities were found in the protocol. Now, it can be cracked within minutes. 

A new Wi-Fi security protocol was introduced in 2003. This new protocol was Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). While most routers currently use WPA or WPA2, a third version, called WPA3, was certified in 2018. Designed to replace the previous WPA protocols, it was built to defeat many popular router hacking tools. 

An attacker needs to crack these security protocols to get unauthorized access to a network. Many tools can crack Wi-Fi encryption. These tools can either take advantage of WEP weaknesses or use brute force password guessing attacks on WPA/WPA2/WPA3. 

Top tools for Wi-Fi hacking 

Wi-Fi hacking tools are of two classes. One can be used to sniff the network and monitor what is happening in the network. The other kind of tool is used to hack WEP/WPA keys. These are the popular tools used for wireless password cracking and network troubleshooting. 

Network discovery 

Before attacking a wireless network, it is necessary to know that it exists. A few different tools provide network discovery functionality to help identify wireless networks and extract useful traffic for use in an attack. 

1. Kismet

Kismet is one of the most famous Wi-Fi hacking tools for Android and other operating systems available. It is a network sniffer that monitors 802.11 wireless traffic and other wireless protocols, such as Bluetooth and Zigbee. 

Kismet is available on all operating systems and can run using any Wi-Fi card that supports radio frequency monitoring mode (RFMON). It passively collects packets to identify both broadcasting and hidden wireless networks. The last 2020 release significantly re-architected the system to improve performance and add new features.  

Get started with Kismet. 

2. NetSpot 4.0

NetSpot 4.0, as its name suggests, is similar to Kismet but designed to work on macOS. Like Kismet, NetSpot performs passive network monitoring and can attempt to crack WEP and WPA keys using brute force password guessing or exploiting known flaws in legacy protocols. 

Download NetSpot here. 

3. inSSIDer

inSSIDer, which MetaGeek offers, is a Wi-Fi scanner for Microsoft Windows and macOS platforms. The tool is available under a freemium model, where some functionality is available for free, but the full tool requires a subscription. This tool is primarily used by Wi-Fi administrators to detect and diagnose issues within Wi-Fi networks. 

inSSIDer provides several different features, including locating open Wi-Fi access points, monitoring the signal strength of Wi-Fi networks and saving logs with location data pulled from GPS. 

Download inSSIDer here. 

4. CommView for Wi-Fi

CommView for Wi-Fi is a wireless network sniffer for 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax networks. Using an easy-to-understand GUI, it captures every packet being sent over the network and provides several different statistics. These statistics are valuable for discovering wireless networks and provide useful information like access points, stations, signal strength, network connections and protocol distribution. For this reason, network administrators often use CommView for Wi-Fi. 

This tool is basically for Wi-Fi network admins, security professionals, home users who want to monitor their Wi-Fi traffic and programmers working on software for wireless networks. 

Download CommView here. 

Password cracking 

Wireless networks use encryption to protect their data against eavesdropping and malicious modifications. However, legacy encryption protocols (like WEP) are vulnerable to attack, and even secure protocols can be cracked using brute-force and dictionary-based attacks. Several different tools exist for cracking passwords that secure Wi-Fi networks. 

5. Aircrack-ng

Aircrack-ng is a popular wireless password-cracking tool. It starts by capturing wireless network packets and then attempts to crack the network password by analyzing them. Aircrack-ng supports FMS, PTW, Korek and other attacks against WEP passwords. Aircrack-ng can also use dictionary attacks to guess passwords for WPA, WPA2 and WPA3 Wi-Fi networks. 

The company behind the tool also offers an online tutorial where you can learn how to install and use this tool to crack wireless passwords. It comes as Linux distribution, Live CD and VMware image options. You can use any of these. If you are using a Linux distribution, the only drawback of the tool is that it requires deeper knowledge of Linux. If you are uncomfortable with Linux, you will find it hard to use this tool. In this case, try Live CD or VMWare image. VMWare Image needs less knowledge, but it only works with a limited set of host OS, and only USB devices are supported. 

Before using this tool, confirm that the wireless card can inject packets. Then start WEP cracking. Read the online tutorial on the website to learn more about the tool. If you follow the steps properly, you can crack a Wi-Fi network protected with WEP successfully. 

Download Aircrack-ng here. 

6. CrackStation

CrackStation is a password-cracking tool that uses lookup tables to crack password hashes. It supports LM, NTLM, md2-5 and several SHA protocols. 

CrackStation has a wordlist containing thousands of passwords. Their team built it by extracting all the words from Wikipedia databases and using an extensive collection of password lists. As a result, they can provide lookup tables with a total of 16.5 billion entries. 

Download CrackStation’s wordlist here. 

7. Reaver

Reaver is an open-source password-cracking tool. It performs a brute-force attack against WPS to break the security of Wi-Fi networks. 

Download Reaver here. 

8. Wifite

Wifite is a Python script designed to simplify wireless security auditing. It runs existing wireless hacking tools for you, eliminating the need to memorize and correctly use the different tools with their various options. 

Wifite2 is a complete rewrite of the original Wifite tool. It is designed to work on the Kali Linux and ParrotSec Linux distros. Before running Wifite, it is recommended that you install their optional tools, as they are essential for running some of the supported attacks. 

To learn more about using Wifite, read this Wifite walkthrough. 

Download Wifite here. 

9. WepDecrypt

WepDecrypt is a wireless LAN tool written in the C language. It uses dictionary attacks, distributed network attacks and other methods to guess WEP Keys. 

WepDecrypt requires installing some libraries and making the binaries executable. For this reason, the tool may not be a good choice for novice users. 

Learn how to download WepDecrypt here. 

10. Crack.sh [formerly CloudCracker]

Crack.sh was the recipient of Clockcracker’s DES cracking capabilities after Moxie Marlinspike’s original site went dark. In the interest of continuing to make use of CloudCracker as a valuable hacking resource, Crack.sh was created at the request of the security community. 

Crack.sh leverages cloud-based resources to crack WPA keys and other types of password hashes. It inputs the handshake file and the network name and performs the password cracking.  

Crack.sh (CloudCracker) has a massive password dictionary (around 300 million words!), giving it a high probability of cracking weak passwords. The price of cracking a hash depends on the desired priority. 

Get started with Crack.sh [formerly CloudCracker] here. 

11. Pyrit

Pyrit is a tool for performing brute-force password-guessing attacks against IEEE 802.11 WPA/WPA2-PSK authentication. It supports the creation of massive pre-computed rainbow tables of passwords stored in databases.  

Pyrit can be used on Linux, macOS and FreeBSD and is available for free. 

Download Pyrit here. 

12. Fern Wi-Fi Wireless Cracker

Fern Wi-Fi Wireless Cracker is designed for password-guessing attacks on WPA/WPA2/WPA3/WEP keys on Wi-Fi networks. It accomplishes this through various attacks, including exploitation of vulnerable protocols, phishing attacks, brute-force and dictionary-based password guessing attacks. 

Fern is available for Windows, Linux and macOS platforms. It operates under a freemium model, where a license is necessary to access the full suite of features. 

Download Fern Wi-Fi Wireless Cracker here. 

13. Airgeddon

Airgeddon is designed to be an all-in-one tool for the security analysis of wireless networks. To accomplish this, it integrates several existing tools and provides a single command-line interface for all of them. This helps reduce the complexity of performing Wi-Fi security audits because Airgeddon’s CLI walks you through the process and handles interactions with all of the underlying tools. 

Download Airgeddon here. 

14. Wifiphisher

Wifiphisher is a tool designed to perform man-in-the-middle attacks by exploiting Wi-Fi association. By convincing wireless users to connect to the rogue access point, Wifiphisher allows an attacker to intercept and monitor or modify their wireless traffic. 

Wifiphisher also enables an attacker to launch web phishing attacks. These can be used to collect user credentials for third-party sites or Wi-Fi network credentials. Additionally, Wifiphisher is designed to be modular, enabling advanced users to write custom code to expand its capabilities. 

This tool is built into Kali Linux by default and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. 

Download and read more about Wifiphisher here. 

Network sniffing 

After gaining access to a wireless network, a penetration tester must perform network sniffing and traffic analysis to take advantage of that visibility. Several options exist for monitoring and dissecting the traffic flowing over wireless networks. 

15. Wireshark

Wireshark is the most popular network traffic analysis tool in existence. Its wide array of built-in protocol decoders makes it easy to dissect and examine packets from all types of network traffic. Wireshark can be run on packet capture files or perform live traffic capture, including wireless traffic. 

Wireshark is designed to be an intuitive and easy-to-use tool, but it is designed for network traffic analysis. While the tool may be easy to use and invaluable for wireless hacking, understanding network fundamentals is necessary to use it effectively. It runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD and others. 

Download Wireshark here. 

16. OmniPeek

OmniPeek is another nice packet sniffer and network analyzer tool. This tool is commercial and supports only Windows operating systems. While it still requires understanding network protocols to use effectively, it provides an alternative to Wireshark for network analysis. 

OmniPeek is included on this list despite being a commercial tool due to the extensive feature set. This tool is intended to be an all-in-one Wi-Fi network management solution. It includes packet capture, protocol decoding, network diagnostics and troubleshooting and even playback and analysis of voice and video traffic for diagnostic purposes. 

Download OmniPeek here. 

Packet injection 

Packet injection enables a penetration tester to inject data into an established network connection. This helps perform denial of service (DoS) and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks against wireless network users. 

17. Airjack

Airjack is a packet injection tool for Wi-Fi 802.11 networks. Its packet injection functionality can be used to perform Denial of Service (DoS) and Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks against Wi-Fi users. 

Download AirJack here. 

Wi-Fi cracking for mobile 

In some scenarios, performing wireless network hacking on a laptop would be conspicuous, while a mobile device would be essentially invisible. A few different platforms exist for performing penetration testing against wireless networks from a mobile device. 

18. Kali Linux NetHunter

Kali Linux NetHunter is an open-source version of the Kali Linux operating system for Android devices, which makes it one of the more popular router-hacking tools. It provides several different options as a Wi-Fi hacking tool for Windows and mobile penetration testing, including Wireless 802.11 frame injection and one-click MANA Evil Access Point setup. In addition to Wi-Fi hacking tools for Android, NetHunter includes a complete Kali Linux toolset. 

Download Kali NetHunter here. 

19. zANTI

zANTI is a full mobile penetration testing toolkit designed to provide “push button” testing of network security, making it an ideal Wi-Fi hacking tool for Windows and other operating systems. Among its many features are Wi-Fi hacking software scripts designed to perform Man in the Middle (MitM) and other automated attacks against the network. 

Download zANTI here. 

20. Reaver for Android (RfA)

Reaver for Android (RfA) is an Android port of the Reaver Wi-Fi cracking tool. It allows password cracking of WPS/WPA2 Wi-Fi networks on a rooted Android phone. 

Download RfA here. 

Choosing the right tool for Wi-Fi security testing 

Attempting to gain unauthorized access to wireless networks is illegal in most jurisdictions. If you want to practice with these Wi-Fi cracking tools, use a wireless network that you own or one where you have the permissions of the network owner. 

Learning about hacking tools is a good start, but the next step should be hands-on learning and career planning. A free one-hour course entitled “Learn How to Hack With AI” is available for free and features a full hour of interactive learning that can be used by novices and experienced professionals alike.  

Begin planning your career strategy and build the learning path to help you achieve that career with our entry-level Cybersecurity Career Guide. It contains strategies to help you choose a career that aligns with your skills and interests.  

If you want to know how much you can make in a cybersecurity career, Infosec’s Cybersecurity Salary Guide lists common career paths and their average salaries, as well as explaining how achieving industry-recognized certifications can directly boost your salary.