Can't use wireless in kali?

[chromeboy42]

So I am trying to use kali to crack a forgotten password on a old router but the computer running kali is only connect to the internet over ethernet and I can't figure out how to use the onboard wifi. When I do ifconfig it only shows eth0 and lo. Does anyone know how to fix this? Any info is appreciated.

P.S. I am running off of a live USB without persistance so the solution needs to work with what kali has installed already.

P.P.S The router I am trying to crack is my own and I really did lose the password to access it.

[barry99705]

What does ifconfig wlan0 do? Also try rfkill unblock all if your wifi card has a software power switch(key command, capacitive button).

[chromeboy42]

What does ifconfig wlan0 do? Also try rfkill unblock all if your wifi card has a software power switch(key command, capacitive button).

This is what I get when I type ifconfig wlan0:

root@kali:~# ifconfig wlan0

wlan0: error fetching interface information: Device not found

My wifi card is built into my motherboard so rfkill didn't do anything. Any other suggestions?

[barry99705]

Make model of the laptop?

[TN.Frank]

Somehow in ifconfig you'll need to bring wlan0 "up" so it'll be active. You may need to do your cracking from wif and disconnect your ehternet to get things working correctly. Not that I'm any kind of expert, never did any wifi cracking but it just seems like as long as you're hooked up via ethernet your computer may default to it and not let you use your wifi.

You need to think of this as an "I'm out and about and need to hak someone's wifi so I can check my e-mail" kind of deal where you only have wifi to work with, no ethernet. If it's WEP it might not be that bad to crack but if it's WPA/WPA2 it might take awhile.

Something else you might try, most routers use "admin" for the login and password. You may still have "admin" as your login then just think of what you might have used "back in the day" for your password and try it. Once you're in you can change it to something that you'll remember more easily.

I know this probably hasn't been much help but at least I'm trying, LOL.

[chromeboy42]

Make model of the laptop?

I'm running kali off of my homebuilt pc. My motherboard is z77 deluxe i if I'm not mistaken (mitx) and wifi is built in. Will running off a laptop work better? I can get access to a MacBook Air if that will work better.

[barry99705]

I'm running kali off of my homebuilt pc. My motherboard is z77 deluxe i if I'm not mistaken (mitx) and wifi is built in. Will running off a laptop work better? I can get access to a MacBook Air if that will work better.

Might need a usb wifi adapter. Not sure who makes the built in wifi for that mobo. The newer macs and linux don't play well together, you'd need to use a vm, and usb wifi for it to work well there too.

Oh. Looks like it's a broadcom chipset.

This may help.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=239922

Edited February 18, 2014 by barry99705

[TN.Frank]

You could always do a hard reset to the router and that'd would put everything back to factory specs including the password. Most routers have the password on the bottom or it's just "admin" for login and "admin" for the password. Worth a shot if you can't get it done any other way.

[digip]

P.S. I am running off of a live USB without persistance so the solution needs to work with what kali has installed already.

Even under a live session, you can install drivers for known cards to use during that specific session and work around it, even using apt-get install to install new tools, etc, just when you reboot, with no persistence, means all of what you do is gone. I've carried USB versions of older BT2 and BT3 with enhanced wifi drivers stored on the thumb drive and manually set up the wifi while working off a live booted session. You should be able to use the wired side to download and setup the wireless side if you can identify the card and there are known drivers for it.

P.P.S The router I am trying to crack is my own and I really did lose the password to access it.

Been up for like 30 or more hours now, so posts like this tend to make me rag on people a bit and also one of the reasons people tend to call me a dick when I reply, so I expect something from the OP in some form of insult or I've probably not trolled hard enough. That, or it really isn't their router, for which you have more issues than getting your wifi to work with Kali.

@TN.Frank gave the best answer really, resetting YOUR router if its really yours! Any other excuse as to why you can't, I'm just gonna call BS and say its not your device. Sure, you can learn to crack your own wifi, but you should be able to reset the router and set a password you know to then test against.

If it is your router as you claim, then you should have physical access. Click the little "reset" switch on the back or use a paperclip if its an older model and find the reset button and restore it to factory settings, login over ethernet, change all passwords, admin interface and wifi settings, lock it down, etc. Rest shouldn't be hard to setup if it's yours and your network, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get back to working the way it was and you can then set a password you know for later testing against if truly learning from your own home device/router/AP! WEP based, should take no more than like 3-5 minutes since its been broken for ages now you just need a card capable of injection and monitor mode and there are automated tools for doing the attacks, even for WPA based setups these days.

---------

When it comes to "cracking wifi", unless its WEP or WPS Pin vulnerable, have fun brute forcing a captured WPA/WPA2 handshake though. WPA password based setup requires some sort of half or full connection from one of the nodes that can connect to it so you'd need to grab the handshake from there first. Also, unless its a really simple dictionary word and numbers no longer than 8 characters, WPA passwords are generally not simple to break, so unless using GPU cracking, you'll be there for a long time, which leads back to just resetting the router if its yours, set an easy password for practicing against, be done with it. If any other device can still connect to it, you'd still need to capture that 4 way handshake to brute force the password if WPA/WPA2 settings are in use on the device.

Easier methods, (why are you cracking wifi again? to get online? how did you get here?) if you DO have a device at home that can connect to it, such as a windows box, then this also makes no sense because nearly every OS connected to a wifi AP will have the password stored in its system. You should be able to pull the password off nearly any device connecting to the router for the most part in plain text usually when booted in and logged onto the router from that same machine, while some other systems and mobile devices, not so easily and possibly not in plain text, but there are tools for different OS's and devices for pulling the wifi stored creds off of them, which again, is why I'm calling shenanigans on cracking your own wifi. Almost every OS stores the password in a retrievable manner whether under the hood if not shows it in plain text on many if you know where to look.

I'm all for learning how to use tools, understanding them, the process behind which the attacks work, etc, but if it is yours, reset the router, set the wifi password to something easy after resetting it, connect and capture the handshake(if wpa) from a second machine and then put the known password into a cracking program of your choice like aircrack, learn how it works, fine and dandy, have a cookie you learned something, zombwtfbbq, k thx, bye.

---------

As for linux not recognizing your pc's onboard wifi, could be a number of reasons. First off, are you are running it in a VM? If in a VM, try a USB wifi adapter since you can't pass onboard wifi to a VM, only the wired ethernet, so use a USB card. If not a VM, then your card isn't recognized, or you need to enable the radio via keyboard in some manner if its a live boot to the main system, which might work and show under dmesg if the card has a hotkey to enable/disable the radio on the card, but my guess is that "wlan0: error fetching interface information: Device not found" message means it doesn't know the wifi device or have a driver for it, which I would just go back to grabbing a USB wifi card known to work with Kali at that point.

Troubleshooting Wireless Drivers:

http://docs.kali.org/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-wireless-driver-issues

For the most part, kali supports the same and some more than what backtrack did:

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Drivers#compat_wireless

[chromeboy42]

Even under a live session, you can install drivers for known cards to use during that specific session and work around it, even using apt-get install to install new tools, etc, just when you reboot, with no persistence, means all of what you do is gone. I've carried USB versions of older BT2 and BT3 with enhanced wifi drivers stored on the thumb drive and manually set up the wifi while working off a live booted session. You should be able to use the wired side to download and setup the wireless side if you can identify the card and there are known drivers for it.

Been up for like 30 or more hours now, so posts like this tend to make me rag on people a bit and also one of the reasons people tend to call me a dick when I reply, so I expect something from the OP in some form of insult or I've probably not trolled hard enough. That, or it really isn't their router, for which you have more issues than getting your wifi to work with Kali.

@TN.Frank gave the best answer really, resetting YOUR router if its really yours! Any other excuse as to why you can't, I'm just gonna call BS and say its not your device. Sure, you can learn to crack your own wifi, but you should be able to reset the router and set a password you know to then test against.

If it is your router as you claim, then you should have physical access. Click the little "reset" switch on the back or use a paperclip if its an older model and find the reset button and restore it to factory settings, login over ethernet, change all passwords, admin interface and wifi settings, lock it down, etc. Rest shouldn't be hard to setup if it's yours and your network, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get back to working the way it was and you can then set a password you know for later testing against if truly learning from your own home device/router/AP! WEP based, should take no more than like 3-5 minutes since its been broken for ages now you just need a card capable of injection and monitor mode and there are automated tools for doing the attacks, even for WPA based setups these days.

---------

When it comes to "cracking wifi", unless its WEP or WPS Pin vulnerable, have fun brute forcing a captured WPA/WPA2 handshake though. WPA password based setup requires some sort of half or full connection from one of the nodes that can connect to it so you'd need to grab the handshake from there first. Also, unless its a really simple dictionary word and numbers no longer than 8 characters, WPA passwords are generally not simple to break, so unless using GPU cracking, you'll be there for a long time, which leads back to just resetting the router if its yours, set an easy password for practicing against, be done with it. If any other device can still connect to it, you'd still need to capture that 4 way handshake to brute force the password if WPA/WPA2 settings are in use on the device.

Easier methods, (why are you cracking wifi again? to get online? how did you get here?) if you DO have a device at home that can connect to it, such as a windows box, then this also makes no sense because nearly every OS connected to a wifi AP will have the password stored in its system. You should be able to pull the password off nearly any device connecting to the router for the most part in plain text usually when booted in and logged onto the router from that same machine, while some other systems and mobile devices, not so easily and possibly not in plain text, but there are tools for different OS's and devices for pulling the wifi stored creds off of them, which again, is why I'm calling shenanigans on cracking your own wifi. Almost every OS stores the password in a retrievable manner whether under the hood if not shows it in plain text on many if you know where to look.

I'm all for learning how to use tools, understanding them, the process behind which the attacks work, etc, but if it is yours, reset the router, set the wifi password to something easy after resetting it, connect and capture the handshake(if wpa) from a second machine and then put the known password into a cracking program of your choice like aircrack, learn how it works, fine and dandy, have a cookie you learned something, zombwtfbbq, k thx, bye.

---------

As for linux not recognizing your pc's onboard wifi, could be a number of reasons. First off, are you are running it in a VM? If in a VM, try a USB wifi adapter since you can't pass onboard wifi to a VM, only the wired ethernet, so use a USB card. If not a VM, then your card isn't recognized, or you need to enable the radio via keyboard in some manner if its a live boot to the main system, which might work and show under dmesg if the card has a hotkey to enable/disable the radio on the card, but my guess is that "wlan0: error fetching interface information: Device not found" message means it doesn't know the wifi device or have a driver for it, which I would just go back to grabbing a USB wifi card known to work with Kali at that point.

Troubleshooting Wireless Drivers:

http://docs.kali.org/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-wireless-driver-issues

For the most part, kali supports the same and some more than what backtrack did:

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Drivers#compat_wireless

Ok well after reading through this I was able to retrieve the password from a older pc which remembered it. I already tried a hard reset but it honestly didn't work. Thanks everyone who posted, now I can leverage my full wireless speed using the router instead of running off a crappy modem which I have been stuck with for a while. Hak5 is awesome and thanks once again.