Problem with Broadcomm 4313 chipset using the aircrack-ng suite

[klaus5]

I have a fairly new laptop which uses the Broadcomm 4313 chipset. I'm using BackBox on a USB stick and want to use the aircrack-ng suite.

Here is what I typed:

airmon-ng start wlan0 (reporting brcmsmac driver).
(then I kill the two processes which may cause problems)
airodump-ng mon0

This showed a bunch of wireless networks, I received lots of beacon frames, yet no data.
Since airodump-ng registers no data, I'm stuck.

The injection test (aireplay-ng -9 -e <essid> -a <bssid> mon0) claims it works.

Since the system offered to install the Broadcom STA wireless driver for me, I tried installing that while connected to a wireless network. It seems to do its thing, yet fails with this message:
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubintu/pool/main/l/linux-meta/linux-headers-generic_2.6.38.14.29_i386.deb 404 Not Found

After that, things are weird. airmon-ng still reports the brcmsmac driver, however, airodump-ng now does report some data packets, yet is shows less networks than before. Running the injection test again (aireplay -9 ...) now shows some poor ping results. Where before 100% were returned, now it's only 3% (one out of 30). So I guess, the attempt to install other drivers did something, but left the system in a somewhat broken state.

Any ideas how to proceed? I'm running from a stick, so anything I do gets lost after shutdown.

[r083rt]

first off install back box with a persistent space on your usb your chasing your tail  ::)
use live usb creator or edit the casper and resize it manually

when your all set come back and we will get the broadcom working for you

[nubbix]

Have you checked the card against aircrack compability page?

[klaus5]

use live usb creator ...
when your all set come back and we will get the broadcom working for you

Thanks for the encouragement, I'm onto it. I'll be back.

[klaus5]

Have you checked the card against aircrack compability page?

Well, I sort of have. http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=compatibility_drivers says "YES" / "MOSTLY". However, when I follow the link to  http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=b43 and use "lspci -vnn", I find that my BCM4313 with PCI ID 14e4:4727 is not listed as supported.

The driver that BackBox currently uses is brcmsmac, and the other option is the proprietary STA driver, whose installation failed as per my first post. About the brcmsmac I read here http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211 and here http://wiki.debian.org/brcm80211, that my chip is supported.

So I hope that I can take "r083rt" up on his offer to get it going for me.

[klaus5]

when your all set come back and we will get the broadcom working for you

OK, I used "LinuxLive USB Creator" and I am running BackBox 2.05 in persistent mode from the USB stick now. I just rebooted and hey, the file I created before is still there.

Great! Thank you for that. So what's next?

[nubbix]

Try a madwifi driver

[klaus5]

Try a madwifi driver

Are you sure? http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/madwifi says it's for Atheros and its also deprecated.

[nubbix]

No i am not sure, but i know broadcom cn be an awfull card with aircrack.. I would recommend an Alfa card

[klaus5]

when your all set come back and we will get the broadcom working for you

Hi r083rt. Are you still there to help?

[r083rt]

sorry bro Im Really busy at the moment and haven't had time to be on the forum

ok lets try to install the broadcom drivers ,.........backbox may already have these installed but I want
to do A PROCESS of elimination as I dont use backbox and Im here to just help the forum  Im shooting blind ..but
Im not a bad shot :)

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sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
sudo modprobe -r b43 bcma
sudo modprobe -r brcmsmac bcma
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe b43
sudo modprobe brcmsmac
sudo modprobe wl


check your wifi ...


we may need to blacklist the b43 and wl etc

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cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf | egrep -e "blacklist wl|blacklist b43|blacklist brcmsmac"


post if these are already blacklisted

if this does not sort your wifi problem then we'll install the sta broadcom from source

Ill check on this post and keep on top of it until your card is working or find a solution

r083rt

[klaus5]

 Thank you for the suggestions.

As I mentioned in my original post, the brcmsmac is already used. Reading https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless the other option would be trying the STA driver (wl).

BackBox offers the installation of this driver, but the installation fails as described in my first post.

I did what you suggested:

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sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe -r brcmsmac
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe b43
sudo modprobe brcmsmac
sudo modprobe wl


On the lines referring to the wl driver I get an error, since this is not present on the system. (bcma wasn't present either).

To install the STA driver I ran:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)  // btw: 2.6.38-14


and then from the menu:
(Start) > System > Additional Drivers

Possibly the install via the menu could have been replaced with this:

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sudo apt-get install broadcom-sta-common
sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source


Then

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sudo modprobe -r brcmsmac
sudo modprobe wl

gives "FATAL: Error Inserting wl (/lib/modules/2.6.38-14-generic/updates/dkms/wl.ko): Invalid argument

I blacklisted brcmsmac in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and rebooted.

(Start) > System > Additional Drivers says:
Broadcom STA: Activated but not currently in use (???)
Broadcom 802.11n wireless LAN driver: Not activated (that's the brcmsmac, I assume).

It seems that the wl driver is not used, since ifconfig -a shows no wlan0.

To fix the problem I went

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sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-backports-modules-*

and restarted.

Finally the wl driver jumped into action.

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sudo airmon-ng start eth1 // yes, it's not wlan0

claimed it worked, but

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sudo airodump-ng eth1

miserably failed.

Further research shows that the wl driver doesn't support monitor mode.

Conclusion:
The "inbuilt" driver brcmsmac works "a little", sadly airodump-ng doesn't capture any data.
After a lot of hassle installing the wl driver, it turns out that this driver doesn't support monitor mode.

P.S.: This page http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt claims, that monitor mode is supported by going

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$ echo 1 > /proc/brcm_monitor0

Enabling monitor mode will create a 'prism0' network interface. Wireshark and other netwokk tools can use this new prism0 interface.

This doesn't work for me, I get "bash: /proc/brcm_monitor0: No such file or directory".
Strange, the directory exists, but is not writable, not even as root.

[r083rt]

yes the b43 seems to troublesome  :'(

try this

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wget http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-5.10.144.3.tar.bz2
tar -jxf broadcom-wl-5.10.144.3.tar.bz2
sudo rm -rf broadcom-wl-5.10.144.3.tar.bz2
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter # I know you have it installed but ill include the step anyway
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-5.100.144.3/linux/wl_apsta.o
sudo modprobe b43
sudo modprobe -r wl


check airmon-ng now

if you have broadcom drivers install in additional drivers disable it reboot
and then check your wifi and air-crack if you still have trouble try

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sudo modprobe b43
sudo modprobe -r wl


and recheck and give me an update

[klaus5]

First of all, I am not convinced that the wl driver can't be made to work.

As I said, monitor mode should work, only that I can't activate it with

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$ echo 1 > /proc/brcm_monitor0

I don't want to give up 5 metres before the goal.

As for your other suggestion to install the b43 driver: I don't think that will work.
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 states that the 14e4:4727 - BCM4313 is not supported.

So, do you have any further hints regarding the wl driver?

P.S.:
Just reading http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=b43. It states:
The “wl” driver does not support aircrack-ng.

So if aircrack-ng doesn't support the wl driver, brcmsmac doesn't work correctly and b43 doesn't support the 4313 chip, we just give up.

[nubbix]

Buy an alfa awus036nha, problem solved