ALFA AWUS1900 Kali Linux Experience

Hi… at this time, I would write regarding a beast wifi adaptor AWUS1900 as seen below

Looking at the specification of this wifi adaptor, You might be surprised to its capabilities here are some

I use this wifi adapter in order to do My research on wifi hacking. I have another wifi adaptor TP-LINK TL-WN722N which is quite good for wifi hacking but not as strong as AWUS1900.

Making this beast run in kali linux requires a bit effort which need to install manually the driver. Unfortunately, if You do not install the correct driver then the packet injection will not run since the begining. Here are the easy steps to install it

1 apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
2 apt-get dist-upgrade
 
root@kali:~#uname -ar
Linux kali 4.14.0-kali3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.14.12-2kali1 (2018-01-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Yes you need to reboot after the full upgrade, Just to ensure all the modules updated reload perfectly.

After You get back into your kali then you need to install driver for realtek chipset RTL8814U

  apt install realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms

That is it all the required step needed.

But sometimes, the above steps just do not work directly, if You face this situation then You have another choice is by installing the driver manually as show below

apt install dkms &&
apt-get install bc &&
apt-get install build-essential && 
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
git clone https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au

in the git directory You will find dkms installation script, You can just execute this script then everything will work fine.

reference
https://github.com/astsam/rtl8812au
https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au

During the penetration testing, sometimes you need to upgrade the tx-power (Transmit Power) from its standard 20 dBm (0.1 watt) to some higher values to improve the packet injection. I used to improve the tx-prower to 32 dBm (1,6 watt). Here is the way I increase the tx-power

$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30

or

$ sudo iw wlan0 set txpower fixed 3000

as the result just like below, see wlan1 interface. But becarefull of this action, since by increasing the tx-power to the non standard, You may break the local goverment regulation and also for long duration usage, it may break your adapter because of over heating.

Lets check the performance which is packet injection, please check image below. The result is amazing that above 80% for almost all the wifi.

Let start the new journey with this new beast.