WIFI working then seems to halt again

I am trying to pentest my WPS vulnerable wireless lan using BT5 r3 / Reaver running in VirtualBox 4.2.6 r82870 with a USB wireless dongle

Opening Wicd Network Manager in BT the dongle flashes away happily and I can see my network with good signal strength (90%).

Typing:

Code:

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iwconfig

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I get:

Code:

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lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0    IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any 
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated  Tx-Power=20 dBm 
          Retry  long limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
         
eth0      no wireless extensions.

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It's in managed mode so I issue the following to get it into monitor mode:

Code:

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ifconfig wlan0 down
iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0

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Outputs:

Code:

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wlan0    IEEE 802.11bgn  Mode:Monitor  Tx-Power=20 dBm 
              Retry  long limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off
              Power Management:on

---

Issuing command :

Code:

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airmon-ng start wlan0

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Outputs:

Code:

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If airodump-ng, aireplay-ng or airtun-ng stops working after
    a short period of time, you may want to kill (some of) them!

    PID    Name
    571    dhclient3
    1760    dhclient3
    Process with PID 1760 (dhclient3) is running on interface wlan0


    Interface    Chipset          Driver

    wlan0          Ralink RT2870/3070    rt2800usb - [phy1]
                        (monitor mode enabled on mon0)

---

I kill the above processes (although tried also without killing them):

Code:

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killall -9 dhclient

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The problem I am experiencing occurs with:

Code:

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airodump-ng wlan0

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No networks show up even though I know they are there when confirmed previously with Wicd Manager before issuing above commands. The dongle does not show any light activity at this point and going into Wicd shows "No wireless networks found".

It's as if the dongle has stopped working all of a sudden.

I never had the problem when running BT from the live CD and was able to get a list of Wireless networks in airodump-ng without problem.

What am I doing wrong?

first, I have never seen the "down" or "up" parameter in iwconfig...It must be brought up/down using ifconfig (ifconfig wlan0 down or up).
Second, you might not have to kill those proccesses, ...The message is caused because the interface has been set in monitor mode, dhclient is a protocol to connect to an AP and to connect to an AP, interface must be set in managed mode, that is why..being in monitor mode and running dhclient might not affect operation.

I have done it before with my alfa 500 and it runs like a charm even with the message. Read carefully, I use the term "might" and not "will"..Try it as it worked for me with or without killing the dhclient.

Try it again, but issuing the ifconfig command....