Lnchbx3

Perfect. Thank you digip. Just what I needed to know. You mentioned "larger computed rainbow tables". Approximately how much larger would the table be if I were to use a 10gb word list?

If I was unsuccessful at cracking a wpa with a word list would it be useless to try and crack the same wpa if I made a rainbow table with the same word list?

So I'm trying to learn about packets in specific the 4 way handshake (EAPOL) packets. I'm not really finding any good guides that will explain each line of the packets so I figured I give the forums a shot. Ive noticed that there are 2 entries in the packet that say "key length" and "WPA key length" and both have a number attached to them. In 1 of the EAPOL packets I captured the "key length = 16" and the "WPA key length = 22". Also the "WPA key length entry is followed by a "WPA key=" entry with 44 characters after it. Can someone explain to me what these actually are and the difference?

Mr-Protocol, thank you for your replies. I went to the BT tutorials as you suggested and used these http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Persistent_USB instructions on my 64gb usb drive, with a few minor changes to accommodate my install, and when I reboot my computer to the usb I get nothing but a black screen and a blinking underscore. No splash screen either. I let it sit there for 30 min and no difference. I've been searching google for hours and have been browsing the BT forums and can't find the answer to my problem. The only changes I made were to the sdb. Mine happened to be sdc. The other change was to the primary sdc1 size which I made mine +160000M. And the balance of the stick was sdc2. The install went perfect as far as I could tell. No errors. I've tried twice and got the same results. Black screen with blinking underscore and no splash screen. I have no problems running BT5 from the live cd which is what I'm rsync ing to the usb as the tutorial suggests. I don't want to use a windows installer because from what I understand i will not be able to use the full stick for storage. In my case 64gb. Nor do I want to encrypt the drive as you suggested. Please help fix my black screen issue. Thank you.

Thank you for the info Mr-Protocol. Any suggestion for creating a persistent usb installation. Im probably going to pick up a 64gb stick so that I can save word lists and such to it. I think I read somewhere that if I create it in windows (I believe using Linix Live) I wont be able to use the full usb stick. Also I checked out http://www.infosecramblings.com/backtrack/backtrack-5-bootable-usb-thumb-drive-with-full-disk-encryption/ and the instructions seem very long and difficult for someone like me just starting to learn Linux. This post http://www.infosecramblings.com/backtrack/backtrack-4-usbpersistent-changesnessus/ states it doesn't work with BT5. Any recommendations?

What would be the limitations/pros/cons of running BT5 (persistent) on a thumb drive or external HD so that I may use it on any computer along with a AWUS036H? Also what size drive would work best?