patrik.cqure.net

Installing Intrepid once again broke the USB support in Virtualbox. If your getting the following error, the next few lines are for you.

The previous fix for Hardy should no longer be used as the mountdevsubfs.sh looks different in Intrepid. The following solution was proposed in a ubuntu forum and looks as if it does the job. Simply add the following line at the end of your /etc/fstab file:


none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0


Make sure that your user is member or the group with gid 46 or adjust the above line. Once added to fstab mount the file system using:


sudo mount /proc/bus/usb


Posted by Patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments

I upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid on my work laptop, a few weeks ago. Apart from ssh-keys not working through the keymanager (again) and Firefox starting up with the window title outside of the screen I'd say it all went pretty smooth. I had some problems with our backup solution, but it turned out that it had nothing to do with the upgrade.

I solved the keyring problem by deleting the .gnome2 folder in my home directory. This could most likely be solved a lot easier but I didn't have the time to dig deeper at the time. Changes have been made to the Networkmanager which now supports mobile internet connections. So far I have not successfully been able to connect to my provider using this new functionality so I'm sticking with the wvdial method.

A really annoying new thing with the network manager is that it shows all my interfaces with static ip-addresses from /etc/network/interfaces. So what? Well if you're running a lot of systems with dedicated "Host interfaces" in Virtualbox, I guess you see what I mean. As a bonus, each time I attach the network cable it tries to bring up one of those virtual interface with a static ip instead of the eth0 interface... Luckily I'm using 3g and wi-fi a lot, otherwise I would have to face facts and fix the problem

Hopefully something that can be configured better. I haven't bothered to look at any documentation, things should just work :). Perhaps an alternateive strategy by dynamically creating interfaces when starting Virtual boxes, leaving the interfaces file and ifconfig output cleaner.

Posted by Patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments

Having put this project aside for a while I picked it up again after receiving a comment on a previous post. With a little help from the developer Hirte at aircrack my wifi-hacking setup is finally complete. It now works exactly the way I was hoping to get it running even when my MAC address is changed. The last parts were resolved by changing back to the r8187 driver which is available from the aircrack-ng web page here. In order to get rid of the annoying "SKB BUG: Invalid truesize (304) len=226, sizeof(sk_buff)=176" I made some adjustments to my syslog-ng configuration as suggested on their web page.

When running with a different MAC address, the address should be changed both using ifconfig and then set as parameter when starting airbase-ng with the -a switch.  Thanks again Hirte!

Posted by Patrik in Security | No Comments

Thanks to SavvyAdmin.com I finally got bridging to work with my wireless device in VirtualBox. I have not yet given it as extensive testing that I would like but my first impression is that it actually works. In order to get it running you need two programs bcrelay and parprouted. I just this minute finnished typing the last lines of my script that starts bridging between a given interface and the wlan. The script is somewhat long as it enables ip forwarding, makes apropriate changes in my firewall configuration, starts the daemons and finally tries to reset it all when it ends. I have posted the script here for anyone who would like to try it out. Feel free to drop me a line with suggestions or changes.

Posted by Patrik in Virtualization | No Comments

Sun released the 2.0.2 maintenance release yesterday. Judging by the changelog it fixes a number of kernel related crashes of the guest os and a number of GUI crashes. Might be good to upgrade in other words.

Posted by Patrik in Virtualization | No Comments

Virtualbox 2.0.0 was released yesterday. Be sure to check it out at www.virtualbox.org.
A part from the GUI improvements it contains a couple of performance improvements and bugfixes. The complete changelog is here.

If you don't want to end up loosing some work (as I did), make sure you don't have any machines with their state saved (ie. make sure you shut all machines down) before you upgrade.

Posted by Patrik in Virtualization | No Comments

So I finally had some great success running airbase-ng as a rouge AP. I ended up buying the Alfa AWUS036H, an excellent 500mw Realtek 8187 based card. I am running a Virtual Gentoo system with the git version of the rtl8187 driver. The SKB BUF error messages from the aircrack-ng version of the driver where too annoying.

All in all I am very pleased with the setup, as it behaves consistantly now (knowing the needed tweaks to get it running). I believe it performs as well as running an AP with the madwifi-ng karma kernel patches from digininja. Well, except for one thing. When changing the MAC address of the wifi card it doesn't really do such a good job anymore. For some reason most clients fail to associate, some still do but theres a considerable drop in the number of connecting clients.

I have tried to change the MAC using both ifconfig and simply specifying the -a option to airbase-ng. Sniffing the traffic using another wifi card shows a lot of probe requests and responses being re-sent, but no requests to associate. From my initial checks I do not see any difference in the requests or responses apart from the "Frame check sequence" and the MAC of-course. But then again, I haven't put that much time into it.

ANY insight into why this happens, and if I am missing something REALLY obvious would be great. I will file a bugreport in the aircrack-ng TRAC system once I collect and clean the relevant packet traces.

Posted by Patrik in Security | 2 Comments

I recently changed mobile phones from my LG KS20 to a Nokia E71. All in all I am very pleased with the change to Nokia and I must say that I am truly impressed with this model. Well, except for PC suite not working with Virtualbox ofcourse I don't know whos to blame but the software does not want to connect to my phone over USB. It finds the phone and installs all the right drivers but once PC Suite tries to connect I get "PC Suite does not regcognise the connected phone. The connection between the PC and phone failed, error code 0x80044403. Switch of your phone, switch it on, and try again."

I am running the latest PC Suite 7.0.8.2 on Windows XP in Virtualbox 1.6.4. My current workaround is to connect to the phone over bluetooth from the same Virtual XP installation using a USB Bluetooth dongle. I must say that this part is a bit of a pain in the ..... Well, I guess you can't have it all.

The issue has been reported at both Virtualbox and Nokia forums so hopefully there will be a fix soon.

Posted by Patrik in Virtualization | 2 Comments

OK so I've been able to get things running quite smoothly now. I cracked my Linksys WUSB54GC card open and soldered a pigtail connector to it according to the following photo http://www.josepino.com/other_projects/antenna/usb-antenna.jpg. I also added txPowerTuning=36 as option to the rt73 driver which I believe did make things somewhat better.

What remains in order to get a good solid environment running is a better wifi card with a lot better transmit power, which I've ordered from the UK today. Hopefully it will be here by monday so me and my friend can do some more tests over a beer or two.

Posted by Patrik in Security | 2 Comments

I have had some better luck with airbase-ng the last few days, most likely due to a combination of factors.

For starters I (once more) ripped apart my USB adapter and de-soldered my external antenna cable and found a better spot for it. The new re-fitted antenna works a lot better now and actually picks up quite a few new networks (and clients of course).

Another change I made was to switch the wireless drivers to the ones available from the git kernel sources which for the moment seem to work better than the previous ones.

I still believe in the airbase-ng concept of a user-mode AP which works with many different chipsets and not that dependent of driver patches. However, in order to switch away from the madwifi-patches it has to work atleast as good as they do and with a USB wifi-interface.

Once I get things running I'll post my setup here. If someone already has done so, please drop me a line with your setup including hardware

Posted by Patrik in Security | No Comments