Wireless penetration testing on newer Macbook Pro (OSX 10.8)

TLDR: If anyone has a newer macbook and is able to do wireless penetration testing, PLEASE let me know how you are achieving such. What boot method are you using? What usb wireless dongle are you using? What version of OSX do you have? Are you using any custom bootloaders?

I have a macbook pro (late 2011), and want to do wireless penetration testing with it, using Kali linux.

My understanding is that you can "install" kali linux two ways on a Macbook, 1) by booting via USB, and 2) Installing via virtualbox.

First I tried installing via virtualbox, since I have some experience running ubuntu in virtualbox in the past. Once I got it running, I realized I need to buy an external wireless card in order to do wireless penetration testing, as the built in wireless card on the Macbook won't show up as a "wireless device" in Kali through Virtualbox.

So I did some googling and found the Alfa AWUS036NH. I bought it on amazon. When it arrived, I could almost get it working, but it would give me errors. I eventually realized the AWUS036NH only has drivers for OSX 10.4 and earlier. My version of OSX is 10.8. Apparently the AWUS036NH came out a long time ago. The newer alpha models that do work in OSX don't support packet injection, so they are worthless to Kali...

After fiddling around with virtualbox for a few days, I eventually gave up. There is no way the AWUS036NH is going to work in OSX. The reason why it doesn't work in OSX 10.8 is because the drivers only work in 32 bit mode. OSX 10.8 is 64bit only. Apparently there is a way to boot OSX into 32 bit mode and install the drivers, but I couldn't get it to work.

Then I tried booting Kali Linux from USB. This got me nowhere either. Apparently Apple really, really doesn't want you to be able to boot other OSs on the Macbook, because I tried two different USB keychains I have (one IOCell 4GB, one ScanDisk 16GB), and neither work. I think it has to do with the fact that Macs use EFI bootloaders, which is I think Mac specific.

I even tried installing rEFInd (A custom bootloader for OSX) but still couldn't load Kali, I kept getting a "Can't find bootable drive" error.

I've been messing with this for about a month now. Please someone who has this working tell me how to get this working!

OK, news update, I got rid of the AWUS036NH and got the AWUS036NEH

I downloaded the drivers and got them installed, but now when I try to attach the device in virtualbox, I get this error:

http://i.imgur.com/vMSE3Jm.png

I believe this error is because of the buggy drivers for the AWUS036NEH

Is anyone out there able to get Kali working on OSX 10.8 (either with virtualbox or by booting via USB stick)

This is ultra frustrating. Every time I try something, it ends up not working.

I have a new MBPR (4 months old) I have only had 100% success running Kali in VMware Fusion using an ALFA AWUS036H connected to the VM. booting my macbook off a USB key I have wifi issues (it connects then disconnects and only stays connected if i reboot with a known ap in range)

Get rid of all your current AWUSxxxxxx products and get the AWUS036H. Make sure you buy a genuine one, too. I reccomend DBROTH on amazon that's where I got mine. Also, just use virtual box and then install the guest add ons. After that, just plug in your new Alfa card and everything will work. Good luck.

Why dont you just install Kali on a new partition and hard boot it? -> no USB, no VirtualBox

The problem is that Kali doesnt install in EFI mode, rather in Legacy Boot... and therefore the proper Bootloader for MAC OSx is missing.
There are a couple known solutions, such as rEFIt and rEFInd.

You can also do it without either, and install Grub to the EFI partition on your MAC. When you hold down the ALT (Option) key during booting, you'll have "EFI" as an option, which then starts GRUB and you can select multiple flavors of Linux that you have installed.

But to EFI install Grub, you will need another Linux which supports EFI install, such as Ubuntu (12.4) and start Ubuntu from a Live CD, and manually install GRUB.

J.

I have one of the new MacBook Pros with the retna display. I got it december 2012. I installed kali on a kingston digital data traveller (with persistence) and it works like a charm. I didn't have to mess with any drivers for the onboard wireless and so far it's worked well.

I suppose having to reboot to start kali is a little bit of a pain but it sounds like virtualbox is as well so...

Freework-

Get VMware Fusion. Works perfectly with the external wireless card and kali linux. I'm running it on an older MacbookPro Mid 2009. It will however require some external setup to make the shell is usable to do penetration testing. I am very new to this and can give you whatever advice I've gained so far. As of now I have the software up and running perfectly. I am using both the Alfa AWUS036H and AWUS036NH. Both worked out the box with plug in.

With the research I've done, it seems that VMware is better than VirtualBox with less errors and more support. Just my $0.02.

Cheers!!!

I'm posting from Kali 1.05 on my MBP (5,3) right now, multi-boot with OSX 10.9 and other linux distros. Sudo DD supergrubdisk2 to a FAT32 formatted USB drive in OSX. Create a msdos partition in disk utility for the Kali filesystem. Burn Kali ISO to a DVD and boot Kali from the disk in recovery mode (I had to use recovery mode to successfully boot the disk on my rig, you can try booting normally). Install Kali, partition 1 (should already be there before your OSX partition) is 200mb EFI system partition, ext4 file system mounted as "/", swap partition if you want. Install grub to your ext4 kali partition. Reboot computer with SGD2 usb, boot SGD2 from USB. Select the search for grub.conf file option. Highlight the Kali Linux recovery mode option, then press "e" to edit the grub.conf before booting. Add "nouveau.modeset=0" after the kernel boot line. Press F10 to boot into kali. Open terminal, run "mkdir /boot/efi" -> "mount /dev/sda1 /boot/efi" -> "apt-get install grub-efi-amd64" -> "grub-install" -> "update grub". Install your Nvidia driver using the directions in the Kali documentation. Reboot. Enjoy

I'm using a late 2013 retina MacBook Pro 13". Just installed Kali 1.0.5 under Parallels Desktop 9 and have no problems with my TP-LINK TL-WN821N (V3, uses ath9k_htc driver).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by runfastitsatrap

Freework-

Get VMware Fusion. Works perfectly with the external wireless card and kali linux. I'm running it on an older MacbookPro Mid 2009. It will however require some external setup to make the shell is usable to do penetration testing. I am very new to this and can give you whatever advice I've gained so far. As of now I have the software up and running perfectly. I am using both the Alfa AWUS036H and AWUS036NH. Both worked out the box with plug in.

With the research I've done, it seems that VMware is better than VirtualBox with less errors and more support. Just my $0.02.

Cheers!!!

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freework

I'll echo this sentiment. I'm running Kali in a VMWare Fusion VM on my MacBook Pro Retina (Mavericks, 10.9.2) with a USB wifi adapter. Seems to be working well.

Currently I'm using an adapter from Panda called: "Panda Ultra 150Mbps 802.11n USB Adapter"
http://www.pandawireless.com/Product...0Wireless.html
Panda's site links to Amazon - who is selling it for $10.99
http://www.amazon.com/Panda-150Mbps-.../dp/B00762YNMG

This adapter was plug'n'play on Kali. I just plugged it in, and configured VMWare to attach the device to the Kali VM and was good to go.

Later today I will test out an Alfa AWUS036NHA in the same config and let you know how it goes.