Hi folks,

I am new here, but not new to Backtrack/Kali.

I tried the search function and Google extensively, but was unable to find anyone having the exact same issue, hence this post.



I have installed Kali on one of my HDDs, I have two injection-capable wireless adapters: one TP-Link TL-WN722N and one Alfa AWUS051NH. In the current state, only the Alfa is connected.

My goal is to catch my own router - a FritzBox 7390 - with its pants down.

After a normal startup, I disable my Ethernet adapter (which is hooked up to my own router) and my wireless adapter via the 'ifconfig down xxxxx' command.


Then, I run "airmon-ng start wlan0". Now, in the beginning (a week ago), it would just go ahead and do that despite two processes it doesn't like (NetworkManager and WPASupplicant).
I can kill those (with "airmon-ng check kill") but in the first couple of days, that was not even necessary - all monitoring and injection would just work fine.

Also, since a couple of days, when trying to enable Monitor Mode, Airmon-NG now complains that an adapter is soft-blocked, and that this needs to be fixed first before Airmon-NG can continue. Fine, I let it fix it.

I also kill the processes anyway, just to be sure.

Now, the soft-block is removed, the processes are killed, and my Alfa AWUS051NH adapter is in Monitor-mode. I can run Airodump-NG without issues, and get a pretty good picture of my wireless surroundings.

When I run Airmon-NG again, without parameters, it confirms that the currently active monitoring interface is "wlan0mon", and not "wlan0".


Here comes the issue: as soon as I run Reaver or Wifite (which uses Reaver), or even Bully, these commands remain forever on "Waiting for Beacon from ..." - so I check multiple things, including Airmon-NG, and voila, wlan0mon is gone and only wlan0 is present.

I can cancel Reaver, re-enable Monitor mode and make sure that the interface is wlan0mon, but the moment I run a Reaver/Wifite/Bully command, it switches back to Managed mode, or rather, the Wlan0 interface.

To make sure it's not some problem with my Kali installation, I made a fresh Kali Live USB stick, and the same thing happens there.
I am currently installing VMWare to see whether the behavior continues in a virtual instance of Kali.


I counter-tested all these things with my TL-WN722N, and it does not show this behavior.


Am I looking at a faulty AWUS051NH? It did not behave this like in the first couple of days, and did exactly what I wanted it to.


OK, so if I accidentally left out any vital information, please let me know and I'll provide it. :-)

Thanks for your help!