I confirm that you can take certification tests in Europe.
I am from Eastern Europe, and I can take almost any type of certification exam, e.g. CEH, CISSP, SSCP, Security+ etc.

The big minus will be if you want to take the training center route, there are many of them but the experience of the instructors is not as valuable as the one from the instructors from the western Europe. But if you really want a certification, as Chris already stated, it's doable.

I earned my Security+ via self study, now I am taking the OS-101 course, and in spring I will go for  the CEH, all via self study.

This site is a valuable resource for any  one who is new to the Security field, and I have to admit that this site and the members of the forum changed the path of my career.

Interesting info.

Thanks guys!

It's a good thing that you are trying to learn how to hack, but my advice is to do this in a test/virtual environment or in a LAN that is just for testing purposes (of course, that LAN has to be yours or you should have the written approval of the owner).

Messing up with production servers is a dangerous thing, as you said, you are still learning, you don't know what's the impact of your scans to the server.

On the other hand, even if your mother is the CEO of the company, you still shouldn't make a security assessment without having a signed agreement between you and the company - so called Get out of jail card.

Is the Security Officer / IT Manager informed about this? If your mother is the only person that knows about this ... it's just not right, you know?
Do you think that in case that server is compromised while you are doing your assessment, and a forensic analysis is performed, it will be easy for her/you to explain your actions?

Try to keep the learning process in a controlled environment and you will be just fine.

And now to answer your question: try searching this forum, I'm sure that you would find some great books that describe the process of ethical hacking step by step.

Welcome to Ethical Hacker Network Forum.

What you are trying to do is not just unethical, but it's illegal too.
So if you expect to get some help in doing something unethical, this is not the place to do it.

Maybe you should start over your process of learning how to hack, with the laws you have to obey in order to not get yourself in trouble.

The next step will be setting up a virtual lab and practice there.

Check out http://www.aircrack-ng.org in order to find out all the things you can do with aircrack-ng suite. 
Last version of aircrack-ng suite includes aircrack-ptw, which enables you to crack WEP quicker than aircrack.

tuborg3110,

The lab setup that you can use to learn the WEP cracking consists of: one AP with WEP encryption enabled (that's yours, not your neighbour's AP or something like this), one computer with any Linux distribution and with aircrack-ng installed and a wireless network card that supports injection. The injection support is not mandatory, but if you don't have enough wireless traffic (or no traffic) you will fail in cracking WEP.

Having all of this you can search the Google as blackice2007 recommended, you'll find a lot of resources (that's the way I did it) or, if this doesn't help, let me know and I will get back to you.

amede0, if you search the forum you'll find some topics about Hacking for living.

Good luck!

amede0, unfortunately I don't know the answer to your question, but I am sure that if you send an e-mail to E-Council you will have an answer.

I may be wrong, but as far as I know it's not enough to work in a security related field if you choose the self study route, you have to have 2 years of experience in a security field also.

amede0, congratulations for you CCNA certification! Great job!

C|EH will surely be useful for your goal, but you'll have to have some hands on experience also. C|EH certifies that you have the knowledge of how to do things, not that you are also really capable in hacking. Please note that I say this assuming that you have only networking experience.

If you'll search the forum for a topic named "The value of certs" you'll make yourself a good idea of what I wanted to say.

Another really good course is OSCP, check out the topic related to it in the Certifications section of the forum.

I simply don't see the point in starting netcat at a "specific" time for learning purposes ... why just don't start netcat when needed or permanently start as dean explained?

And I never said that just using netcat implies malicious intent. The malicious intent I was thinking of is the one above.

But hey, the important thing is that kthc got the answer he was looking for.

Welcome to Ethical Hacker Network.

Hope you noticed the ethical part of the name, and we are hoping that you are going to use netcat for ethical purposes (for testing, learning etc.) on a system that you own.

If you want to start netcat at a specific time with the purpose to open a back door to that system with malicious intent, we totally discourage you in doing this.

But to answer your question:
- Windows - use "at"
- Linux - use "cron"

I don't know if Languard can help you with this, but surely Kismet can.

Just put your card into promiscous mode and start Kismet, and if there is enough traffic finaly it will display also the network range used by the wireless network.

Looks like dean is right, WPA2 is also vulnerable to an off-line dictionary attack.

Last time I used aircrack-ng suite for a wireless hacking demonstration there was nothing about WPA2 dictionary attack in the aircrack-ng tutorials.

Good thing to know, thanks dean!

Congratulations blackzarro!

Good luck with your new position!

Why spend time&effort on setting up a wireless IDS when you can improve your wireless security settings?

If your access point supports it, you should switch to WPA2 encryption (not vulnerable to attacks yet). Scan you computer for keyloggers or backdoors, review your wireless settings, update your wireless card driver and that should do it.

But, if you are willing to spend time in setting up a Wireless IDS, you can use Airsnare in order to be alerted when an unfriendly MAC address associates with your access point, but if you want to be protected for future attacks, my opinion is to use Kismet. Kismet can be set up also as an WIDS. You will be alerted when someone is wardriving near your location, if various attacks are performed (deauthentication etc.). I don't know if Airsnare has the same capabilities as Kismet does, but I am only familiar with Kismet.

The hacker can sniff your packets in passive mode, but if you are using an encryption method that's secure enough you should have no problems.

But, before doing any of the above, maybe it will be a good idea to review your AP logs, you can find out from there if someone else successfully authenticated with your AP.