9 Simple Math Tricks You’ll Wish To Know For Lifetime

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Mathematics has always maintained its reputation as a nightmare among students. We detest solving maths problems since forever.

But exceptions are always there. Some genius minds take great pleasure in solving tricky mathematical questions. It helps them in enhancing their calculative abilities.

Well, if you ask me, I would say that I have never liked maths. It is the worst, I would say. Sometimes I feel like-Is this all even makes any sense.

However if you want to improve your calculative abilities and cultivate your skills in solving maths in the most easiest way possible then you have arrived at the right place. These hacks will help you solve mathematical problems in an instant.

1. Multiplying big figures quickly.

2. Here is the easiest way to learn the table of 9 for kids

3. Add and subtract fractions in one go

4. Multiply any number with 11 using this method. Your answer will always be right.

5. This is an ultimate trick to memorize Pi number.

6. Multiply numbers by 6,7,8,9 on your fingers.

7. Calculate percentage of a number easily

8. Here is a hack to find the fraction of a whole number

9. How to convert Celsuis to Farenheit and vice-versa.

6 Secrets About the Human Brain That Will Make You a Better Marketer

Knowing how the human mind processes information and images—and putting that knowledge to use—can help you become a more engaging and effective marketer.
Researchers in a new(ish) field of study are trying to figure out how our hard-wired preferences affect the decisions we make. Neuromarketing research is “the systematic collection and interpretation of neurological and neurophysiological insights about individuals using different protocols, allowing researchers to explore nonverbal and unconscious physiological responses to various stimuli for the purposes of market research,” according to the Neuromarketing Science & Business Association.
Put simply, neuromarketing is the study of how our brains respond to marketing and how it affects our behavior—consciously or unconsciously—explains Andy Crestodina, co-founder and strategic director of Chicago web design and development agency Orbit Media Studios, who speaks and writes about the topic.
“There are ‘cognitive biases’ built into all of us,” he says. “We can’t help it. Marketing either works with or against the cognitive biases.”
It’s critical to understand these predispositions, to know how our minds process information and images. “The competition for attention is fierce, so knowing what lights up our brains gives marketers an edge that can help them win,” says Grey Garner, vice president of marketing at Emma, an email marketing provider based in Nashville, Tenn.
So let’s take a look at some secrets of the human mind you can tap into from a marketing perspective.
Secret 1: We all have a primitive brain. The amygdala controls our reactions and emotions, and it works much faster than our conscious, rational mind, Garner says. In fact, we experience gut reactions in three seconds or less. Emotions make a more lasting imprint than rational thought.
Marketing takeaway: Aim for a gut reaction, and pay special attention to how your materials look when scanned quickly (as opposed to deliberately considered—because no one has the time or inclination to do that anymore).
Pay attention to the things people see first. In email marketing, your subject line and pre-header (that bit of text you read most prominently on a mobile device, above the body of the email) should grab readers and speak to their pains, wants, needs and emotions. In blogging or other online content, pay special attention to headlines. (You should spend as much time writing the headline as you do the rest of the piece.) In website content, make your pages welcoming and easily grokked.
Secret 2: Our brains love images. Our brains process images much faster than text. Approximately 90 percent of all data that the brain processes is visual. We remember pictures with text more than we remember text alone.
Marketing takeaway: Use images, of course—but make them special, and lay off the stock shots. I like the way Loews Hotels & Resorts integrates candid guest images into its “Travel for Real” ad campaign, and the way men’s clothing company Chubbies uses hilarious GIFs in its email mailings. You can also use a web tool like Canva or mobile app Over (madewithover.com) to create custom images.
Secret 3: Our brains love images of faces. Research suggests that natural selection favored humans who were able to quickly identify threats and build relationships. As part of that, we are wired from birth to recognize and prefer human faces. The part of the brain that processes human faces is right next to the part that processes emotions.
Marketing takeaway: Use real people in your marketing materials, and consider putting faces on landing pages, in emails or on web pages designed to drive a desired action.
Eye-tracking studies show that our brains will default to first look at human faces on a web page. What’s more, we’ll look where the faces are looking. So entice by adding, say, a photo of a face that looks toward a call-to-action button or crucial bit of text.
Secret 4: Colors inspire specific feelings. There’s more to color choice than what looks good. Different colors cue different signals in a brain. In fact, research has shown that 62 to 90 percent of our feeling about a product is determined by color alone. Yellow activates the anxiety center of the brain. Blue builds trust. Red creates urgency. And that’s just the start.
Marketing takeaway: There’s a science and art behind color choice—especially as it relates to marketing fundamentals like call-to-action buttons. “Don’t choose colors arbitrarily,” Crestodina says.
What colors work best for your company will depend on your brand, positioning and audience. The best approach, as always, is to test how color affects response before choosing.
Secret 5: Names change behavior. What something is called affects our reaction to it. A recent study by David R. Just and Brian Wansink of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab found that calling the same portion of spaghetti “double-size” instead of “regular” caused diners to eat less.
Marketing takeaway: Carefully consider how your wording might influence attitude as you name products, describe models or options and create customer messaging.
Secret 6: We crave belonging. We have an innate desire to conform. “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other,” said philosopher Eric Hoffer.
Marketing takeaway: Remove anxiety, signal belonging and build credibility with an audience by using social proof and signals—in the form of endorsements from well-known influencers in your market; badges or awards from McAfee, TRUSTe or Norton; media logos (from outlets that have quoted or referenced you); customer testimonials woven throughout a site (not exiled to a specific page); and social widgets and shares, assuming you have a solid social media program in place.
One more tip is to use inclusive, specific language on any call to action to signal what Crestodina calls a “call to conform.” Rather than having a sign-up box for a newsletter, say something like, “We are the nation’s leading resource for home heating and cooling information and supplies. Subscribe now.” You might invoke belonging by saying: “Join more than 35,000 contractors and homeowners who seek weekly heating and cooling tips and supplies.”

20 Lists Every Entrepreneur Should Create

Being a startup founder who is obsessed with my own personal growth, I frequently get sucked into blog posts with titles like “The top 5 traits of all successful entrepreneurs.” These articles tend to cite characteristics such as passion, persistence, inspiration, an eye for talent, a data-driven mindset, great communication skills, and the ability to galvanize team members toward a common long-term vision.
Yet there’s one extremely critical skill that I never seem to hear anyone talking about: list management.
This skill may not sound sexy, but there is absolutely no way an entrepreneur can succeed without obsessively maintaining updated lists of all resources and projects that will contribute to his or her endeavor’s success. Such lists may be in the form of spreadsheets, Evernote files, contact lists, Salesforce files, Dropbox folders, Trello boards, paper to-do lists or any number of other accessible formats.
Related: 5 Traits All Successful Startup Entrepreneurs Have
Whatever the preferred style of list management, leaders of all types must constantly be able to recognize three things:

1. When to make a new list
2. What should be sporadically added to each list
3. How to prioritize and act upon list items

Below are several examples of lists that I have built over the past few years at Brainscape. I’ve divided them into two types: People Lists and To-Do Lists. If you don't have these lists going already, get started now.

1. Existing investors' and advisers' skill sets

It is important to maintain a list of your existing investors’ skill sets to help you remember whom to ask for particular advice or favors (Example: If one of your investors used to work in media, you can ask them for PR help.). Keeping your investors engaged, and remembering to catch up with them individually from time to time is your secret weapon to multiplying your army of evangelists.

2. Potential investors

Over the course of running your business, you will likely hear about many potential angel investors or venture capitalists who would be perfect candidates for your company. These people should be added to a potential investors list as soon as you hear about them! Even if you are not currently fundraising (or if you are “too early” for particular later-stage investors), keeping a log of your conversations with potential investors will make your life much easier once you are ready for your next fundraising blitz.

3. Existing partners

If your business has any content or distribution partners, it is important to maintain great communication with them. A simple spreadsheet -- listing all your partners, the nature of your partnership, the key champions within the partner company and any additional notes about the relationship -- can help you remember when to send them exclusive company updates, holiday cards or any other helpful correspondence.

4. Potential partners

Are there companies you’d like to partner with in the future? Did someone just mention a great potential future partner during a meeting? This is a job for the potential partners list. Whether you’re logging ideas for dream introductions, or just keeping track of conversations you’ve already had, a central list of potential partners can keep all your corporate development activities organized. Just be sure you’re targeting the right person within the potential partner organization.

5. Potential acquirers

Companies are almost never acquired as the result of a single discussion. Most successful acquisitions are actually the result of ongoing conversations between the startup and the acquirer. Maintaining a list of your potential acquirers, getting introduced to the right people in their organizations and logging your conversation notes are important activities to prepare your company for an eventual exit.
Note that many of your current or potential partners could also be potential future acquirers of your business, so you may want to condense these two lists into a single corporate development spreadsheet.

6. Journalists you know

You never know when your company may do something that is “story worthy.” Keeping an updated list of all your journalist buddies can help you quickly get the word out when the time is right. Just be sure to stay in touch with them (and even do occasional favors for them) so that they pay attention to your next email!

7. Journalists you want to know

There may be a handful of influential journalists who regularly write about your industry. Keep a list of them! I’ve found Twitter lists to be a particularly helpful tool for this. If you regularly comment on their posts, retweet them and favorite them, they’ll eventually notice and engage you in a conversation about what you do.

8. CEO friends

Your fellow entrepreneurial buddies can be among your most important assets. They can help with confidential advice, they can serve as potential partners on key initiatives, they can attend your startup’s parties and they can introduce you to your target investors when you’re ready for the intros. I tend to just use a Gmail contacts list for this.

9. Awesome talent you know

Did you just meet an amazing engineer who you'll eventually want to hire as an Android developer (once you raise some money)? Or perhaps an amazing future vice president of sales who loves your company and wants to stay in touch?
Don’t lose touch with these people. Keep them in a separate contact list. You never know if you may need them -- or if you may want to refer them to opportunities at your friends’ companies.

10. “People to update”

Sometimes you just want to blast a whole bunch of “relevant” contacts with an important update about your company (particularly while building hype for PR or fundraising blitz). Having an up-to-date master list of these people -- which might include investors, entrepreneurial friends, journalists, friends and even your family -- will make this update process much easier.
I maintain my own version of this list by simply tagging all my relevant Gmail contacts with a label called “General Updates.”
Related: An Efficient and Effective Way to Ask for an Introduction
The second type of lists that startup founders should maintain is to-do lists. Startup to-do lists come in many flavors:

1. Short-term CEO tasks

Things you need to do in the next few days. I personally use Gmail’s built-in Tasks feature for this, and I have an iPhone app that allows me to access this list on the go.

2. Long-term CEO projects

Things you need to do “eventually.” I use a Trello board for this. I generally sit with my executive team each month to re-prioritize this list and to make sure I’m working on the right things.

3. Short-term product tasks

Things your product team is currently working on. This helps you remember what’s important before you bother them with a trivial new idea. If it’s not an emergency, add it to the product backlog.

4. Product backlog

Features that you hope to “eventually” build. At Brainscape, we generally don’t have a detailed long-term road map, since we prefer to re-assess the product backlog every few weeks and determine which items should be added to the short-term tasks.

5. Pending conversation agendas

Talking points for your upcoming weekly team and/or individual meetings. I like to have at least two to three bullets ready for all my scheduled discussions. I tend to just keep these talking points on a written notepad by my desk.

6. Your email inbox

Correspondence that requires action. The most successful entrepreneurs are obsessive about archiving emails that have already been addressed, so that anything still in the Inbox is essentially a form of short-term “to-do list.”
Any emails representing longer-term projects should either be immediately transmitted to another form of to-do list, or should be “snoozed” to come back to later (by using a tool such as Boomerang, Mailbox or Google Inbox). My personal goal is to reach inbox zero at the end of each day (although that rarely happens).

7. Blog posts to write

Ideas for articles you’d like to write, either for your blog, LinkedIn and/or for a major publication as a guest author. You should add to this list whenever a good blog post idea pops into your head. You can chip away at this list either by scheduling some regular weekly writing time or by just saving the list for whenever you have some “down time.”

8. Marketing ideas

Ideas for slogans, ad campaigns, giveaways, contests, promotional videos, email blasts, brand ambassador activities and any other marketing initiatives that you might want to explore at some point. Brainscape maintains a shared Google spreadsheet where everyone on the marketing team can add their ideas and review priorities at our weekly meetings.

9. Books to read

Novels or nonfiction books that will somehow make you a better entrepreneur. This list often tends to grow faster than you can attack it. One useful tool is to record the person who recommended the book to you, so you can remember to thank them once you do read it (even if it is years later). I keep this list in the standard Notes app on my iPhone. See this link for other tips on how entrepreneurs should read business books.

10. Future business ideas

Ideas for companies that you might want to start one day, when or if you ever exit your current company. As James Altucher writes, your “idea muscle” can get weak when you’re in a groove, so be sure to write down the ideas when they come to you! My own list currently has several dozen business ideas (most of them pretty dumb, but still worth recording).
Having spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs over the past few years, I have found that the most successful founders tend to be those who are most obsessed with keeping such lists for everything in their lives.
Even founders who have suffered from ADHD (which actually tends to be a common entrepreneurial trait) are typically very good at maintaining organized lists -- possibly because they once had to compensate for forgetfulness as a student. If you don’t think you are good at lists yourself, feel free to copy some of my list ideas as a starting point, and you’ll find that it gets easier and easier over time.

You Can Now Remotely Turn Off Any Android Smartphone/Tablet By Sending SMS

This is how you can remotely turn off Android smartphones/tablets by sending a SMS

Android is the most popular and widely used operating system in the world, which offers a lot of features to its users. To make Android more user friendly, a lot of apps are being developed to run on this OS.
In this article, we will discuss about the apps that will allow you to remotely shutdown Android smartphone/tablet by sending  a single SMS that you will set in the app. This feature comes in handy if you have forgotten the phone at home and want no one to attend your calls. Similarly, there are many situations in where we want to remotely shutdown our Android smartphone.
To configure the secret code or SMS in your Android device, you just need to follow the simple guide below:

Steps To Remotely Turn Off Any Android Smartphone/Tablet By Sending SMS

1. It is important to note that the app works only on the rooted Android smartphone/tablet. Visit here to get complete guide to root your Android smartphone/tablet.
2. Now download Remote Power Off zip file in your computer. Extract the zip file in your computer and navigate to Folder > System>App> Remoteturnoff.apk.
3. Then transfer the Apk file in your Android device
4. Be sure to enable Install from unknown sources in Settings > Security > Unknown sources.
5. Install this app now in your Android smartphone/tablet by tapping the Apk that you have transferred.   
6. First, type the current password that is null and then type the new password and confirm it again by clicking on change secret code.
7. Grant this app superuser permission by going to superuser app.
8. It’s done. You now just need to send the secret code as a SMS to your Android smartphone/tablet when you want to remotely shut it down.

By following the above steps, you can send a secret code and easily turn off your device without touching it, or without being near to your Android smartphone/tablet and also without using the Internet.

How I Tripled My Salary in Less Than One Year After Getting Fired

When I graduated with a B.E. in English in 2013, I had big dreams . . . and absolutely nothing on my resume. I wanted to be a writer, but didn’t have a single published clip to call my own. As you can imagine, the next few years weren’t very fun. Since 2013, I’ve:

• been unemployed three times, for a total of 13 months.
• failed to hold a “full-time job” longer than a year.
• quit three jobs, been let go once and gotten myself fired once.

While most of my friends were gainfully employed, I was living with my parents and desperately chasing after freelance gigs. So when I did finally manage to land a great job, I couldn’t believe my luck. It seemed too good to be true. And it was. I was gently let go six months later because I was an awful employee.
Then I did five things that completely transformed my life. Within two months, I was working 50-plus-hour weeks for my own clients and making six figures -- more than twice my previous salary. Today, less than a year later, I’m making more than three times that original salary.
Guess what? I didn’t have to move mountains to make that happen. I just had to learn a few new habits. Here are five of the most important things I adopted right after getting fired:

1. I learned how to do sales.

Most people aren’t business minded, and I was no exception. Instead of sitting down and taking the time to learn how to sell my services -- and how to better sell my client’s services -- I figured I could get by on my credentials and brilliance alone. Nope.
Business author Daniel Pink argues that, in today’s hyper-connected society, we’re all salespeople. In other words, you’re selling yourself short if you don’t learn how to sell.

2. I spent an hour each day on new business.

After looking through my “sent” folder, I discovered that the emails I'd written that got the highest response rates were also the shortest and most concise. So, I wrote up an email template and customized it for every job application by addressing the poster’s specific pain and my gain.
My system worked like a charm. Now, for every five jobs I apply to, I get one or two responses. And I consistently apply to new jobs every day. I even use that same template for LinkedIn inmail.

3. I set my own hourly rates.

Let’s say you work at a consultancy, and your salary is $50,000 per year, or about $25 per hour. Assuming a 5 percent “pay raise” each year, your salary would be $63,814 per year after five years, or about $32 per hour. Not bad, but nothing to write home about, either.
Now, imagine that you quit that job and joined “Freelance Nation.” In your first year of business, you decide to charge $50 per hour, just to see if you can get clients at that rate. You do. The next year, you charge $60 per hour. By the end of your fifth year of freelancing, you’re charging $100 per hour and making well over six figures.
If you really believe you can offer premium services, why shouldn’t you charge premium rates?

4. I rejected bad clients.

When you work for a company, there is no such thing as a bad client -- unless the sales director says so. But as we all know, bad clients are very real.
For B2B businesses, every bad client is another nail in the coffin. When you only have 10 to 20 clients, you really can’t afford to spend 80 percent of your time watching over a few bad eggs that add up to only 20 percent of your revenue. In other words, make sure you only work with good clients willing to pay your rates.

5. I decided to do something I love -- that also pays.

People are always arguing about whether you should do something you love or something that pays the bills. But does this have to be a choice? I hope not.
If you really believe that “no one likes their job,” you’re subscribing to one of the most self-destructive beliefs in the world. Your “job” is what you’ll be doing eight-plus hours a day, five or six days a week, until you retire. So, why choose between passion and profit? Do something you love and something that pays the bills. The two do cross paths.
Still, it’s up to you to find the intersection. There’s no Google Maps for that.
Related: How to Deal With 4 Types of Impossible Clients

10 Behaviors of Smart People

“Stupid is as stupid does.” The great irony of Forrest Gump was how insightful his simplistic sayings really were. Sort of the opposite of Peter Seller’s character in the classic movie, Being There. Everyone thought Chance the Gardener was brilliant but he really was a dolt, albeit (spoiler alert) a dolt who could walk on water.

In case you don’t know, Gump’s line means you are what you do. In other words, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you think you are or are supposed to be, if you consistently do dumb things, you’re still dumb.

I’m sure this offends the politically correct crowd. Want to know what I say to that? Stupid is as stupid does. If you can’t discuss something as fundamental as human intelligence for fear of offending people, I don’t care how smart you think you are, you’re just dumbing yourself down.

Smarts are ridiculously important and I’ll tell you why. Smart people make smart decisions and that’s the most important factor in how things turn out for you.

One of the smartest choices you’ll ever make is to seek out smart people in your work relationships. Just to be clear, I don’t mean those who think they’re smart but do dumb things. I mean the real deal. Since we don’t have smart meters built into our foreheads, here’s how to tell if someone’s smart, starting with the obvious:

They make smart decisions.

Smart people know their actions have consequences. They also know that they have to earn business results one decision at a time. In other words, a few smart calls won’t make you omnipotent. Consistently making good decisions takes discipline and focus.

Related: Think You're Special? You Just Might Be.

They learn from their mistakes.

From our first steps to our last, we learn everything in life by trial and error. We all make mistakes because that’s how we learn. Smart people learn from theirs. After all, if you don’t face reality and judge yourself honestly, you’ll never do better next time. 

They don’t have all the answers.

There’s an old saying, “Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.” It’s a funny line but if you say it in earnest, that’s pretty annoying. Smart people don’t need to constantly reinforce the fact by acting like know-it-alls. They’re smart enough to know how much they don’t know.

They surround themselves with smart people.

No man is an island. Individuals may be smart but small teams do the best work. Steve Jobs may have been a control freak, but he made sure the eight or nine people on his leadership team were the most talented he could find and taught them to do the same with their teams. That’s smart.

They are resourceful.

Since human intelligence is an evolutionary advantage -- we didn’t evolve an enormous neocortex for no reason – intelligent people are generally more adaptable and creative in the way they make use of their surroundings to achieve results. 

Related: How Adversity Leads to Success

They can reason.

I will never get this as long as I live: Even when presented with irrefutable evidence that they’re wrong, many people will consistently hold their ground as if their life depended on it. Without critical thinking, logical reasoning, causality, and the scientific method, we’d still be living in the dark ages.

They don’t follow fads.

We live in the golden age of fads and pseudoscience. Frankly, nothing speaks louder to the dumbing down of society that was portrayed so accurately in Mike Judge’s futuristic spoof Idiocracy. Urban Dictionarycalls it a "movie that was originally a comedy, but became a documentary.” Truth.

They don’t live beyond their means.

Don’t get me wrong, we all stretch ourselves somewhat when we’re young. But once you’ve achieved something you don’t want to lose, it’s not very bright to squander it needlessly by living beyond your means.  

They’re often their own worst enemy.

As developed as our frontal lobes are, everyone has at least one emotional blind spot that haunts them. Oftentimes that’s just the flipside of whatever it is that makes them smart to begin with. Like yin and yang, they need each other to coexist.

As entrepreneurs, they’re not always successful.

In my opinion, when it comes to business success, intelligence is necessary but not sufficient. I’m not talking about shysters who sucker people or someone who made a fortune off a single smart trade. To found and run a successful business over the long haul, you’ve got to be smart. Period

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WPA Password with Reaver

Your Wi-Fi network is your conveniently wireless gateway to the internet, and since you're not keen on sharing your connection with any old hooligan who happens to be walking past your home, you secure your network with a password, right? Knowing, as you might, how easy it is to crack a WEP password, you probably secure your network using the more bulletproof WPA security protocol.

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WEP Password with BackTrack

You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA…Read more

Here's the bad news: A new, free, open-source tool called Reaver exploits a security hole in wireless routers and can crack most routers' current passwords with relative ease. Here's how to crack a WPA or WPA2 password, step by step, with Reaver—and how to protect your network against Reaver attacks.

In the first section of this post, I'll walk through the steps required to crack a WPA password using Reaver. You can follow along with either the video or the text below. After that, I'll explain how Reaver works, and what you can do to protect your network against Reaver attacks.

First, a quick note: As we remind often remind readers when we discuss topics that appear potentially malicious: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise. The more you know, the better you can protect yourself.

What You'll Need

You don't have to be a networking wizard to use Reaver, the command-line tool that does the heavy lifting, and if you've got a blank DVD, a computer with compatible Wi-Fi, and a few hours on your hands, you've got basically all you'll need. There are a number of ways you could set up Reaver, but here are the specific requirements for this guide:

• The BackTrack 5 Live DVD. BackTrack is a bootable Linux distribution that's filled to the brim with network testing tools, and while it's not strictly required to use Reaver, it's the easiest approach for most users. Download the Live DVD from BackTrack's download page and burn it to a DVD. You can alternately download a virtual machine image if you're using VMware, but if you don't know what VMware is, just stick with the Live DVD. As of this writing, that means you should select BackTrack 5 R3 from the Release drop-down, select Gnome, 32- or 64-bit depending on your CPU (if you don't know which you have, 32 is a safe bet), ISO for image, and then download the ISO.
• A computer with Wi-Fi and a DVD drive. BackTrack will work with the wireless card on most laptops, so chances are your laptop will work fine. However, BackTrack doesn't have a full compatibility list, so no guarantees. You'll also need a DVD drive, since that's how you'll boot into BackTrack. I used a six-year-old MacBook Pro.
• A nearby WPA-secured Wi-Fi network. Technically, it will need to be a network using WPA security with the WPS feature enabled. I'll explain in more detail in the "How Reaver Works" section how WPS creates the security hole that makes WPA cracking possible.
• A little patience. This is a 4-step process, and while it's not terribly difficult to crack a WPA password with Reaver, it's a brute-force attack, which means your computer will be testing a number of different combinations of cracks on your router before it finds the right one. When I tested it, Reaver took roughly 2.5 hours to successfully crack my password. The Reaver home page suggests it can take anywhere from 4-10 hours. Your mileage may vary.

Let's Get Crackin'

At this point you should have BackTrack burned to a DVD, and you should have your laptop handy.

Step 1: Boot into BackTrack

To boot into BackTrack, just put the DVD in your drive and boot your machine from the disc. (Google around if you don't know anything about live CDs/DVDs and need help with this part.) During the boot process, BackTrack will prompt you to to choose the boot mode. Select "BackTrack Text - Default Boot Text Mode" and press Enter.

Eventually BackTrack will boot to a command line prompt. When you've reached the prompt, type startx and press Enter. BackTrack will boot into its graphical interface.

Step 2: Install Reaver

Update: This step is no longer necessary, as Reaver comes pre-installed on Backtrack 5 R3. Skip down to Step 3.

Reaver has been added to the bleeding edge version of BackTrack, but it's not yet incorporated with the live DVD, so as of this writing, you need to install Reaver before proceeding. (Eventually, Reaver will simply be incorporated with BackTrack by default.) To install Reaver, you'll first need to connect to a Wi-Fi network that you have the password to.

1. Click Applications > Internet > Wicd Network Manager
2. Select your network and click Connect, enter your password if necessary, click OK, and then click Connect a second time.

Now that you're online, let's install Reaver. Click the Terminal button in the menu bar (or click Applications > Accessories > Terminal). At the prompt, type:

apt-get update

And then, after the update completes:

apt-get install reaver

If all went well, Reaver should now be installed. It may seem a little lame that you need to connect to a network to do this, but it will remain installed until you reboot your computer. At this point, go ahead and disconnect from the network by opening Wicd Network Manager again and clicking Disconnect. (You may not strictly need to do this. I did just because it felt like I was somehow cheating if I were already connected to a network.)

Step 3: Gather Your Device Information, Prep Your Crackin'

In order to use Reaver, you need to get your wireless card's interface name, the BSSID of the router you're attempting to crack (the BSSID is a unique series of letters and numbers that identifies a router), and you need to make sure your wireless card is in monitor mode. So let's do all that.

Find your wireless card: Inside Terminal, type:

iwconfig

Press Enter. You should see a wireless device in the subsequent list. Most likely, it'll be named wlan0, but if you have more than one wireless card, or a more unusual networking setup, it may be named something different.

Put your wireless card into monitor mode: Assuming your wireless card's interface nameis wlan0, execute the following command to put your wireless card into monitor mode:

airmon-ng start wlan0

This command will output the name of monitor mode interface, which you'll also want to make note of. Most likely, it'll be mon0, like in the screenshot below. Make note of that.

Find the BSSID of the router you want to crack: Lastly, you need to get the unique identifier of the router you're attempting to crack so that you can point Reaver in the right direction. To do this, execute the following command:

airodump-ng wlan0

(Note: If airodump-ng wlan0 doesn't work for you, you may want to try the monitor interface instead—e.g., airodump-ng mon0.)

You'll see a list of the wireless networks in range—it'll look something like the screenshot below:

When you see the network you want, press Ctrl+C to stop the list from refreshing, then copy that network's BSSID (it's the series of letters, numbers, and colons on the far left). The network should have WPA or WPA2 listed under the ENC column. (If it's WEP, use our previous guide to cracking WEP passwords.)

Now, with the BSSID and monitor interface name in hand, you've got everything you need to start up Reaver.

Step 4: Crack a Network's WPA Password with Reaver

Now execute the following command in the Terminal, replacing bssid and moninterface with the BSSID and monitor interface and you copied down above:

reaver -i moninterface -b bssid -vv

For example, if your monitor interface was mon0 like mine, and your BSSID was 8D:AE:9D:65:1F:B2 (a BSSID I just made up), your command would look like:

reaver -i mon0 -b 8D:AE:9D:65:1F:B2 -vv

Press Enter, sit back, and let Reaver work its disturbing magic. Reaver will now try a series of PINs on the router in a brute force attack, one after another. This will take a while. In my successful test, Reaver took 2 hours and 30 minutes to crack the network and deliver me with the correct password. As mentioned above, the Reaver documentation says it can take between 4 and 10 hours, so it could take more or less time than I experienced, depending. When Reaver's cracking has completed, it'll look like this:

A few important factors to consider:Reaver worked exactly as advertised in my test, but it won't necessarily work on all routers (see more below). Also, the router you're cracking needs to have a relatively strong signal, so if you're hardly in range of a router, you'll likely experience problems, and Reaver may not work. Throughout the process, Reaver would sometimes experience a timeout, sometimes get locked in a loop trying the same PIN repeatedly, and so on. I just let it keep on running, and kept it close to the router, and eventually it worked its way through.

Also of note, you can also pause your progress at any time by pressing Ctrl+C while Reaver is running. This will quit the process, but Reaver will save any progress so that next time you run the command, you can pick up where you left off-as long as you don't shut down your computer (which, if you're running off a live DVD, will reset everything).

How Reaver Works

Now that you've seen how to use Reaver, let's take a quick overview of how Reaver works. The tool takes advantage of a vulnerability in something called Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or WPS. It's a feature that exists on many routers, intended to provide an easy setup process, and it's tied to a PIN that's hard-coded into the device. Reaver exploits a flaw in these PINs; the result is that, with enough time, it can reveal your WPA or WPA2 password.

Read more details about the vulnerability at Sean Gallagher's excellent post on Ars Technica.

How to Protect Yourself Against Reaver Attacks

Since the vulnerability lies in the implementation of WPS, your network should be safe if you can simply turn off WPS (or, even better, if your router doesn't support it in the first place). Unfortunately, as Gallagher points out as Ars, even with WPS manually turned off through his router's settings, Reaver was still able to crack his password.

In a phone conversation, Craig Heffner said that the inability to shut this vulnerability down is widespread. He and others have found it to occur with every Linksys and Cisco Valet wireless access point they've tested. "On all of the Linksys routers, you cannot manually disable WPS," he said. While the Web interface has a radio button that allegedly turns off WPS configuration, "it's still on and still vulnerable.

So that's kind of a bummer. You may still want to try disabling WPS on your router if you can, and test it against Reaver to see if it helps.

You could also set up MAC address filtering on your router (which only allows specifically whitelisted devices to connect to your network), but a sufficiently savvy hacker could detect the MAC address of a whitelisted device and use MAC address spoofing to imitate that computer.

Double bummer. So what will work?

I have the open-source router firmware DD-WRT installed on my router and I was unable to use Reaver to crack its password. As it turns out, DD-WRT does not support WPS, so there's yet another reason to love the free router-booster. If that's got you interested in DD-WRT, check their supported devices list to see if your router's supported. It's a good security upgrade, and DD-WRT can also do cool things like monitor your internet usage, set up a network hard drive, act as a whole-house ad blocker, boost the range of your Wi-Fi network, and more. It essentiallyturns your $60 router into a $600 router.

How to Monitor Your Internet Usage So You Don't Exceed Your Data Cap

Internet data caps are becoming a reality and can seriously suck. If you're stuck with the…Read more

Further Reading

Thanks to this post on Mauris Tech Blog for a very straightforward starting point for using Reaver. If you're interested in reading more, see:

• Ars Technia's hands on
• This Linux-centric guide from Null Byte
• The Reaver product page (it's also available in a point-and-click friendly commercial version.

Reddit user jagermo (who I also spoke with briefly while researching Reaver) has created apublic spreadsheat intended to build a list of vulnerable devices so you can check to see if your router is susceptible to a Reaver crack.