Sunday, May 06, 2018

Quick review of Alfa AWUS036AC (or AC1200?)

Some time in March I read this article which has a great run-down on the state of 5 ghz packet injection in Kali Linux and the most capable wireless cards. I got all excited and attempting ed to order the AC1200 without carefully examining the provider. Instead I got the device pictured on Amazon but it says AWUS036AC on the back.

Oh well. Driver support out of the box is flaky and airmon-ng doesn't play well with it even with the proper drivers installed.

 apt install dkms realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms  


Then, to put the card into monitor mode, perform the following set of commands each time:

 ip link set wlan1 down  
 iw dev wlan1 set type monitor  
 ip link set wlan1 up  

To take it out of monitor mode (very important) before unplugging:

 ip link set wlan1 down  
 iw dev wlan1 set type managed  
 ip link set wlan1 up  

So those are the cons.

Pros: Great reception of nearby access points. Where before I could barely manage 56 for the closest APs, now it shows as mid-30s. This makes capturing handshakes potentially much easier. As it is, most likely that's what I'll use this device for.

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