Howto: Wireless devices and drivers.

[imported_hatake_kakashi]

Recently there has been many confusion amongst owners of 802.11n capable chipsets as well as those who happen to use recommended cards just to find out that their device does not work according to what was written.

Such confusions lead to experimenting in wrong areas or in my case assuming the false positives.

If you happen to be such owners of devices with certain chipsets that do not seem to be supported even though you have checked sites like:

http://backtrack.offensive-security....e=HCL:Wireless
Compatibility - madwifi-project.org - Trac
Hardware - Rt2x00Wiki
Ralink chipsets based wireless devices
Home - Broadcom 43xx
network card device matrix - ACX100/ACX111 wireless network driver project (Linux, BSD)
...etc...

As well as these (using the information obtained from lspci or lsusb depending on how your device is actually connected to the computer):

Drivers - Linux Wireless
Drivers - Linux Wireless

Also referencing your internal chipset's model number which can be done by locating the FCC ID: XXXXXXXXXXX sticker on the device itself or via pulling the device apart if it doesn't have FCC ID: XXXXXXXXXXX info and you have exhausted the info from lspci or lsusb. Then visiting this site:

https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/...ericSearch.cfm

You may happen to have a really rare and non-conforming device and should probably ask your question here.

However in most cases your device can easily be solved by doing a bit of homework yourself.

The information extracted from lspci/lsusb is very handy when you paste the ID into google. The ID is in a form of XXXX:XXXX.. e.g. a3c2:c100. These usually leads to results in forums and therefore in most cases the driver/chipset be identified.

When it comes to such cases you can then check to see if the driver is actually loaded via lsmod. In most cases the driver would not be loaded if your ID does not match the driver's ID filter. Such as for example in this instance:

http://forums.remote-exploit.org/new...-usb-wifi.html

It is a simple matter of adding the ID into the header file of the driver. Which in this instance is in the source code of the ralink driver. From there on you will need to recompile the driver.

The same goes with drivers that are based on mac80211 stack. This will be noticeable when your lsmod shows that you have mac80211 loaded and that you have only one wireless device.

So in the future, if you happen to encounter a device that may seem to have support but not in your case, it would not hurt to try adding the ID and recompiling the driver.

Also it would be a good idea to check the git repositories for wireless drivers. They are available here:

For accepted patches/updates:

git.kernel.org - linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/compat-wireless-2.6.git/summary

For the ones yet to be accepted:

git.kernel.org - linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-testing.git/summary

Such information can be handy to track down the progress and to see if its possible to add the id into the driver.. if not then there might be a need to use compat-wireless package/wireless-testing package.

[Archangel-Amael]

Thanks for making this guide hatake_kakashi
I know that you post the same basic info a lot of times here.
Maybe we can just use this tutorial as a reference link instead.

[RageLtMan]

a lot of laptops come with intel cards - like my Intel 5100AGN, and so far as i've been able to tell there's no good fix for the injection/fakeauth issues with the cards. Somewhat of a PITA given the cards great range

[imported_hatake_kakashi]

archangel.amael: no worries. I knew it was somewhat obvious but I had to make it stand out in a bid to try and prevent all these un-necessary commotions (well hoping to).

RageLtMan: Your card isn't a bad card, it maybe somewhat new but give it time and maybe more patches to make injection/fakeauth work better. Put it this way, your card isn't one of those broadcrap chipsets or one of those rare, no brand chipsets.