upgrade broke airbase-ng

[cabadce]

I've upgraded the system via Synaptic: Reload/Mark all upgrade/Apply
(available repositories were default BT4-final)

This pointed the aircrack-ng package to be upgraded: the after-upgrade installed version is 1.0rc1-r1668-bt7.

The adapter for mon0/at0 interfaces is:

ID 0bda:8187 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187 Wireless Adapter

Since this upgrade, using "airbase-ng -c $AP_CHANNEL -e $AP_ESSID mon0" creates an AP with the required ESSID, but also broadcasting an empty ESSID.

root@bt:~# iwlist wlan0 scan | grep -A 3 -B 3 AP
Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
Quality=70/70 Signal level=-22 dBm
Encryption keyff
ESSID:"Test AP"
ESSID:""
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s

As a consequence, the AP shows in wicd manager with a hidden essid (and I think it would not appear at all, using standard MS Windows or Mac network tools).

To prevent airbase-ng from broadcasting empty ESSID, one has to configure the AP to respond only to directed probes (using the "-y" option), which is sad when pentesting a network vulnerabilities to rogue AP:

root@bt:~# airbase-ng -c $AP_CHANNEL -e $AP_ESSID -y mon0

then:

root@bt:~# iwlist wlan0 scan | grep -A 3 -B 3 AP
Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
Quality=70/70 Signal level=-24 dBm
Encryption keyff
ESSID:"Test AP"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s

This time the AP shows up with proper ESSID in wicd manager (and I suppose in any standard network tool).

Additional informations:
- the behavior is the same with/without the "-P" switch
- interface mon0 MAC address is altered using macchanger before creating interface at0

This may relate to this recent thread: airbase-ng shouldn't broadcast empty ssid if an ssid is specified, that does not seem very active for a few weeks.

Googling about this, I've also found this thread channels removed for european wlan cards? at the aircrack-ng bug reports forum: since the upgrade I'm not able to use the channel 13 (I'm in EU) that I used before. Though this seems to be a driver issue, it actually didn't happen for me before the same upgrade that has broken airbase-ng. I will try to manage the CRDA stuff before continuing on this one.

But, regarding the aircrack-ng package, I have a few questions:
- Can anyone reproduce the issue about improperly broadcasting empty ESSIds ?
- Does BT4 still include aircrack-ng 1.0rc1 ? if so, is there a plan/workaround for upgrading to aircrack-ng 1.0 ? If not (due to requirements issues I suppose, may be airoscript and gerix-wifi-cracker), could we expect the upgrades to backport the most important fix/features from aircrack-ng 1.0rc2/1.0rc3/1.0rc4/1.0 to the aircrack-ng 1.0rc1-rXXXX-btX,?
- I would like to downgrade my aircrack-ng package from 1.0rc1-r1668-bt7 to 1.0rc1-r1645-bt0, that works better for me. I've tried using Synapic, but Package/Force version is unavailable for this package; which tool/commands should I use ?

Any answer or advice would be appreciated.

Regards.

[joker5bb]

latest version in the repo is Aircrack-ng 1.0 r1685
u have installed the ubuntu version

[theuidx]

I think you've installed the wrong version... mine works fine.