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The Battle for Monitor Mode
Here’s a problem that caused a lot of grief and in the end had a simple solution. At the heart of Yoink!, is the network and more specifically the unleashed nature of the wireless network. In order to work it’s magic, our tools needed a reliable wifi card setup for promiscuous mode. After a few dead end cards and ancient advice, we hit gold. Orinoco Classic Gold.
Just one problem. It didn’t work. Half a dozen tutorials, several different drivers and patch combos and we had a card that failed to grab any packets at all. What of that simple solution? Through trial and error we swapped out everything, one component at a time (OS, driver, firmware, patch, wireless config and config tool). Failing all that, we did the obvious and tried a new Orinoco card. So of course it worked. The same model from the same store; one worked while the other crapped out. Go figure. So here it is, your recipe for monitor mode:
Monitor Mode Recipe
Ingredients
- Orinoco Classic Gold (8410WD)
- Gentoo Linux
Mix & Stir
- Seriously, grab and install Gentoo. I’ll wait. No, really you’ll like it. Trust me.
- Compile the kernel with PCMCIA support (Yenta Cardbus), PCMCIA Network Support, and Wireless Support (but make sure you don’t compile in Orinoco support—we need to patch it first).
- Install the basics.
$ emerge pcmcia wireless-tools orinoco. This should provide you with the wireless tools (iwconfig, iwpriv) and the patched orinoco drivers (0.15_rc2). - To manually switch the card into monitor mode use:
$ iwpriv ethX monitor <channel> 2 - From here feel free to setup kismet or tcpdump. All those wayward packets are yours.
See. Easy as pie. Like the old geezers said in the forums. Just go buy the card, it’s $25 at J&R Electronics. Come on it has a happy business man on the box. It has to be good.
Oh, and if some piece of hardware is acting up don’t be afraid to swap it out.
