Trying to make my USB Wifi adapter work on Virtualbox (Kali Guest, Windows host)

[Foxtrotte]

Hey everyone !

 

I'm trying to make Kali Linux run under Virtualbox, with my Windows 10 PC. I recently bought a USB WIFI adapter (Realtek RTL8812au), and I'm trying to USB passthrough the adapter to my Kali VM.

Thing is, every tutorial has the same method, and it doesn't work for me. VirtualBox seems to pick it up for a second and then nothing happens.

So I installed the Virtualbox extension pack, made a USB filter for my adapter, then before starting the VM I unplug my WIFI adapter (which is the only one I have on my PC btw), I wait for the VM to start, login to Kali, and then replug it. Thing is, I hear the Windows USB on sound, but Windows doesn't use it for network (which is supposed to happen). Virtualbox's USB Icon flashed red once, then green, then the dot disappears and Kali doesn't detect any USB adapter.

I really don't understand why it is working for everybody, but not me ^^

I also have Connectify and the Realtek utility installed on my PC, and yes I tried with those two disabled and it doesn't work either.

Can anyone help me ?

Thanks !

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

IIRC, as long as your main OS has WiFi/Ethernet, VMware will use THAT to connect to the internet. I don't remember how, but it uses sort of like a pass-through...

[neoraptor]

23 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

IIRC, as long as your main OS has WiFi/Ethernet, VMware will use THAT to connect to the internet. I don't remember how, but it uses sort of like a pass-through...

He probably wants to hack (cough, cough - do a security audit) into wifis.

 

@Foxtrotte - just boot it from usb, leave it overnight to do its trick. Also atheros/qualcomm wifi cards are the better, if this is a laptop and has a built in, you can do pass through as well. For the usb I believe it has to be plugged in before booting the os, maybe the module for the realtek is not ok. You can do lsmod, iw list, cat /proc/net/dev , also there should be something in the dmesg (replug it and check again)

[Foxtrotte]

Thanks for your answers !

 

I would love to avoid as much as possible installing the OS. 

Also I'm not using VMWare but rather Virtualbox. And its default way of doing thing is by virtualizing some kind of network ethernet device. 

What I want is to passthrough the USB adapter, just like how you would passthrough a USB stick. 

When using Virtualbox, USB sticks work, but for some reason, not my WIFI adapter...

 

@neoraptor You seem to be talking as if I installed the OS. I didn't and Virtualbox doesn't seem to passthrough my adapter properly, so this wouldn't work

[neoraptor]

you don't need to install it, you can run it from the usb drive (flashdrive, sdcard etc).

[Foxtrotte]

Yeah, but nothing would be saved and I would have to reconfigure it again everytime I want to use it... I don't want to just "do a security audit" with Kali, I want tu use it mostly just to play around and educate myself about what it's capable of...

[Circaflex]

the last time i dabbled with kali, the default experience out of the box with usb wifi adapters was that it was set to NAT. I had to bridge the adapter for it to work.

[Foxtrotte]

@Circaflex Yup it's exactly how it works. The thing is I don't want to use Virtualbox's network adapter thing, because it emulates an ethernet connection. What I want to do is passthrough my USB WIFI adapter to my VM, so that the network can behave exactly like a real computer would

[Circaflex]

8 hours ago, Foxtrotte said:

@Circaflex Yup it's exactly how it works. The thing is I don't want to use Virtualbox's network adapter thing, because it emulates an ethernet connection. What I want to do is passthrough my USB WIFI adapter to my VM, so that the network can behave exactly like a real computer would

take a look at PCI Passthrough https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#pcipassthrough

[neoraptor]

you can save your state when running of USB as well....