Managing wireless USB with virtualized BT5

[theodore88]

Hi there,

I am using VirtualBox 4.1.20 with OS X 10.8.1 as the host and BT5 as the guest.

I understand that wireless monitoring/injection in a virtual OS requires a wireless USB adapter, so I am using a TP-Link TL-WN725N adapter (chipset: Realtek RTL8188CUS) for just that task. With the rtl8192cu kernel module and airmon-ng, the card appears to create a new interface (mon0) to enter monitoring mode and injection works as well. So far so good.

I am wondering if it is possible to connect BT5 to the internet via the host OS while using the TP-Link adapter to run aircrack-ng at the same time. It is also difficult to disable monitor mode with airmon-ng and then connecting the USB adapter to the Internet (via WPA2 wireless) for use with Nmap; are there any thoughts on how to do this more efficiently?

Thank you for your time and patience.

theo

[sickness]

While this is not a Backtrack but a VBox question.
Your Backtrack should have internet connectivity as long as your host OS has it and your network adapter is set either to NAT or Bridged (in VBox). Note that your internet connection will appear as ETH0 if you are running with the network card from the host OS.

[theodore88]

While this is not a Backtrack but a VBox question.
Your Backtrack should have internet connectivity as long as your host OS has it and your network adapter is set either to NAT or Bridged (in VBox). Note that your internet connection will appear as ETH0 if you are running with the network card from the host OS.

I have tried to enable an NAT connection, and a new interface "eth0" does appear. However, wlan0 simply disappears and VirtualBox displays the USB wireless device as being disconnected, returning an error if I try to reconnect it to the VM. I'll try looking elsewhere for a solution to this problem.

In the meantime, I am wondering if I can use BT5 to connect to a WPA2 wireless network without using an automatic network manager like Wicd (since it interferes with aircrack-ng). I'd like to be able to quickly switch between network mapping tools like Nmap and wireless crackers like aircrack-ng. Is there an easy way to do this?

[sickness]

If you wish you can setup a manual wireless connection.

[theodore88]

If you wish you can setup a manual wireless connection.

By that do you mean connecting the wlan0 interface to the WLAN using the command line? I've seen several how-tos for this, but doesn't it seem rather inefficient to keep manually connecting/disconnecting via the command line in order to switch between Nmap and aircrack-ng?

Sorry if my questions seem unclear, perhaps I am overcomplicating things.

theo

PS; Is there a functionally better virtualization app than VirtualBox for BT5, or is it just down to user preference?

[sickness]

You can automate it with a custom made script if you wish.
Also why do you need to switch between nmap and aircrack (I don't understand what do you mean by switching).

[theodore88]

You can automate it with a custom made script if you wish.
Also why do you need to switch between nmap and aircrack (I don't understand what do you mean by switching).

As I am learning to use these tools, I'd like to be able to switch between using them on the same wireless adapter. I might want to use aircrack-ng to figure out network monitoring, and then move on by connecting to my wireless network to use Nmap on an example website. The problem is that using aircrack-ng involves disabling any network manager that makes an Internet connection easy and fast, so I'm wondering how I can efficiently switch between these tasks. Hopefully this helps clear any misunderstandings.

theo