Nethunter as an every-day-use OS?

[Dave-ee Jones]

Hoi!

So I've been looking into Nethunter a bit more and am deciding whether or not it's worth installing it as a primary OS on my primary phone (Nexus 5X). I was wondering if anyone could answer a few questions about it for me..here they are:

• Can it act as a normal phone (make/answer calls, download Google Play apps, SMS, etc.)?
• Is it reliable enough not to crash on 99% of the apps I download from Google Play?
• What are the major benefits to having Nethunter as a primary OS (if any)?

At first I wanted to dual-boot/use a MultiROM manager so I can have the best of both worlds but it may not be as ideal as I first thought..

I will probably just install it on my old Nexus 5 and see how it goes but I thought it better to pose the question here as I know there are at least a few who have messed around with Nethunter and Kali.

Thanks!

[i8igmac]

I have also been interested in this. do any of these nexus devices have autheros wifi chip? packet injection works with internal chip?

 

I'm not interested if I have to carry around usb wifi card.

Edited February 24, 2018 by i8igmac

[Rainman_34]

1 hour ago, i8igmac said:

I have also been interested in this. do any of these nexus devices have autheros wifi chip? packet injection works with internal chip?

 

I'm not interested if I have to carry around usb wifi card.

The nexus 5 does but the 5X requires an external usb wifi adapter

[thoregem]

I have nethunter installed on my nexus 7. It's like standard android, but it runs a bit slower. You do have a full kali shell, so that's pretty cool. 

If you want to, I say go for it. 

[Dave-ee Jones]

19 minutes ago, GarrukApex said:

I have nethunter installed on my nexus 7. It's like standard android, but it runs a bit slower. You do have a full kali shell, so that's pretty cool. 

If you want to, I say go for it. 

Yeah, trouble is I use my phone for work and other bits and pieces, and I've customised it quite heavily.

[thoregem]

Then, it's really up to you. As I said, it does run a bit slower, which is actually quite a lot slower since it's older hardware. Bootup takes about three times as long as it used to, as it has to load all the packages on boot. However, you do get a sweet app developed by the offensive security folks that lets you execute a plethora of attacks from within it. 

There are tradeoffs. If you want to turn your phone into a mobile pentesting station, then I'd say go for it. If you're worried, I'd wait until you upgrade devices and then do it. My nexus isn't my main phone (it's a tablet) so I don't have to worry about bricking it and then being screwed. I think it's pretty cool, but I don't know how much use you'd get out of it. If you do pentesting professionally, then it'd be a great thing to be able to bring with you on jobs. 

It's up to you dude. 

[Dave-ee Jones]

Got it running fine on my Nexus 5, however HID attacks don't seem to work. I'm probably doing something wrong, but I've tried these 2 cable techniques:

• Straight USB (PC) to Micro USB (phone)
  • This is the standard cable that comes with most 10 y.o. phones
• USB OTG (phone) -> USB male (from OTG) to USB male (to PC)
  • 2 separate cables, USB OTG from phone to USB male to PC

Either my USB port is broken (although, I tried others), the male-to-male USB cable is broken (I have 2 of these, though, same manufacturer) or I'm just doing the cabling wrong.

Or I could just be doing everything wrong and I don't need the cables.

I don't know. Haven't found a single tutorial out there that shows the cabling end-to-end so it must be something ridiculously obvious. 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Dave-ee Jones

[Dave-ee Jones]

Did a factory reset, re-root and flashed Nethunter again (does the installer ever work on it's own? it always get stuck on 40% or 90%..) put the USB interface to MIDI and it seems to be working better, although the default HID Attack script ("*ipconfig etc.") doesn't work, but the DuckHunter one does - which is alright.

Is there any program that allows you to use the phone's keyboard as the PC's keyboard though (as in, the pop-up keyboard on the android phone pushes the pressed keys as HID input to the victim PC). I think that would be pretty neat.

[Just_a_User]

I thought NetHunter was recommended not to be a everyday OS due to it sitting on top of older less secure android builds. Maybe its changed as i haven't looked at for a while. Instead is was a dual boot kinda thing using https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.multirommgr

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Just_a_User

[Dave-ee Jones]

20 minutes ago, Just_a_User said:

I thought NetHunter was recommended not to be a everyday OS due to it sitting on top of older less secure android builds. Maybe its changed as i haven't looked at for a while. Instead is was a dual boot kinda thing using https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.multirommgr

 

Yeah I'd already looked into that option however it doesn't support Nexus 5X. Hopefully they fix that soon :)

Still, the Nexus 5X has a different WiFi card to the Nexus 5, meaning that Kali can't use it for network pentesting, sadly.

[Just_a_User]

12 minutes ago, Dave-ee Jones said:

Still, the Nexus 5X has a different WiFi card to the Nexus 5, meaning that Kali can't use it for network pentesting, sadly.

you mean not without using an external card? yeah only the 5 apparently can do that.

"There are some devices that can support monitor mode with a modified firmware and kernel such as the Nexus 5, 7 (2012), and Nexus 6P. Right now, only a specially modified version of Nexus 5 supports monitor mode for Nethunter"

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Just_a_User

[Bigbiz]

I have nethunter on a nexus 6 its great. Its not really a daily driver ROM but could work. Download apps from google store easy. Trying to get update to work is a pain though. I keep reinstalling chroot.you do need a external chip for injection. Other than that fav.

[Dave-ee Jones]

20 hours ago, Bigbiz said:

I have nethunter on a nexus 6 its great. Its not really a daily driver ROM but could work. Download apps from google store easy. Trying to get update to work is a pain though. I keep reinstalling chroot.you do need a external chip for injection. Other than that fav.

Yeah, I've also found updating the kernel and stuff is a huge pain with Nethunter, so I just gave up with that, installed a fresh copy and stuck with it (meaning I can't use other cool features like installing drivers for the AWUS036ACH..). Oh well, still has other cool features (favourite is probably the USB Keyboard app).