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Strange Tetra behavior - possibly self inflicted


TNnet

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First post, so please be gentle!

A few days ago my boss dropped a Tetra on my desk and asked me to have a look at it and see what I thought of it. Some coworkers had already had a look at it and "hadn't been able to get it working as they expected". So I thought I'd start easy and replicate the 'Bruce Wayne' demo off the wifipineapple.com homepage, using one of our internal WiFi networks as the target. 

With a little Googling here and there I was able to setup the Tetra and get internet access to it without issue. I'm using a laptop with a wired Ethernet connection and the USB cable to the Tetra - the laptop WiFi is disabled. For sanity's sake I've stuck with the default IP addresses.

I've noted three weird behaviors with the particular unit that might just be normal, but as this is the first hands on experience I have, everything is strange.

  • If I set the unit to do a continous Recon scan, it will randomly restart.
  • The PineAP service turns itself off - not often but usually once per hour. I can restart it from the webconsole without issue.
  • I can filter by Mac and deauth, but I then see a handful of clients linking to the Tetra that are not in the client filter ( set to allow ). If I kick those then nothing else ever links.

The last one is the biggie. I follow the basic steps through, but no targeted MACs deauth. I have tried a few variations, very mindful that I have a lot of Wifi around me and I don't want to disrupt anything outside of the scope of my test. I've tried filtering on SSID as well without any luck.

I've factory reset the unit a couple of times ( SSH & firstboot ) but that makes no difference. It's also up to date with the latest firmware.

So I could be missing something vital because of my unfamiliarity with Tetra, or my coworkers could have borked it, or it could be something else. 

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Paul.

 

 

 

 

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How are you powering the Tetra?  It's well documented in these threads that it requires more power than your USB port can give it.  I think the max it needs is about 18W so you should use a power supply with at least 12V@1.5A.  I generally use a power supply when I'm stationary but when I go mobile I use two Pineapple Juice 15,000 battery packs.  This should fix most of your problems

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Ok I have tried running through the demo steps again with the external PSU, but unfortunately I still have all of the issues, including the restart behavior. The PineAP has been a bit more stable but I've had at least one restart.

Can someone confirm that it I do a Recon scan, add a SSID to the filter, set it to allow, and then deauth all clients from that SSID in the scan that I should only see entries on the client page from clients trying to connect to that SSID and perhaps the odd associated client? If this is the correct behavior, then my Tetra is ignoring the filters completely.

Thanks

Paul.

 

 

 

 

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I am using the PSU that arrived in the box (12v 2A )

I am asking the device to look a half a dozen MAC addresses on a single SSID, so if that is causing high CPU I'll be surprised. 

Forgive the 'bump' but I am getting pressure from my employers to get this to work.

So before my boss pulls the plug on this, does anyone have any constructive advice here beyond plugging a power supply in?

 

Thanks

Paul.

 

 

 

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Like Foxtrot said, use the top command to verify there are no services taking up too much processing power.  Don't just assume there aren't any greedy processes.  The only reason we keep bringing up the power supply is because your symptoms are in line with power issues that we've both seen before.  If you have the proper power supply, there are no greedy processes, and it is still restarting constantly then it may be borked.  You say you've reflashed it a couple times.  Did you actually flash or just factory reset?  If you only did a factory reset you might want to try flashing the firmware altogether.  Look at the Firmware Recovery section here.  If you still have problems after all of this then you probably will want to contact Hak5 for a replacement.

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