ALFA AWUS036ACM "Failure detecting driver properly please report"

[Reo]

In short:

• airmon-ng is having issues detecting the drivers for the ALFA AWUS036ACM USB peripheral.
• All other utilities are able to detect and use the peripheral (This post was made while connected to the internet via the dongle).
• I followed the instructions given here:= for installing the correct drivers: https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/How_to_Install_Firmware_for_Mediatek_based_USB_WiFi_adapters.md
• I compared the above installed drivers against the drivers used in a Kali VM where it works, and the drivers are the same.
  • mt7662u.bin and mt7662u_rom_patch.bin

Additional details:

$ sudo airmon-ng --verbose

Linux lgpzb 6.4.15-200.fc38.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Sep  7 00:25:01 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Regulatory Domain set to CA, see 'iw reg get' for details

K indicates driver is from 6.4.15-200.fc38.x86_64
V indicates driver comes directly from the vendor, almost certainly a bad thing
S indicates driver comes from the staging tree, these drivers are meant for reference not actual use, BEWARE
? indicates we do not know where the driver comes from... report this


X[PHY]Interface		Driver[Stack]-FirmwareRev		Chipset										Extended Info

?[null]
		??????[ieee80211]-unavailable	non-mac80211 device? (report this!)								 Failure detecting driver properly please report
?[null]wlp0s20f0u4
	??????[ieee80211]-unavailable	non-mac80211 device? (report this!)								 Failure detecting driver properly please report
K[phy0]wlp0s20f3	iwlwifi[mac80211]-77.2df8986f.0		Intel Corporation Tiger Lake PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 11)				mode managed

$ cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 38 (Thirty Eight)

$ uname -a
Linux [...] 6.4.15-200.fc38.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Sep  7 00:25:01 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ nmcli
wlp0s20f0u4: connected to <WiFi SSID> 3
        "MediaTek MT7612U 802.11a/b/g/n/ac"
        wifi (mt76x2u), 00:C0:CA:B2:F5:26, hw, mtu 1500
        ip4 default, ip6 default
[...]

$ ethtool -i wlp0s20f0u4
driver: mt76x2u
version: 6.4.15-200.fc38.x86_64
firmware-version: 0.0.00-b1
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 4-4:1.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
mt76x2u                32768  0
mt76x2_common          28672  1 mt76x2u
mt76x02_usb            24576  1 mt76x2u
mt76_usb               49152  2 mt76x02_usb,mt76x2u
mt76x02_lib            98304  3 mt76x02_usb,mt76x2u,mt76x2_common
mt76                  118784  5 mt76_usb,mt76x02_lib,mt76x02_usb,mt76x2u,mt76x2_common
rfcomm                102400  4
[...]

$ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0e8d:7612 MediaTek Inc. MT7612U 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wireless Adapter
[...]

$ dmesg
[...]
[ 4902.243628] usb 4-4: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 4902.257681] usb 4-4: New USB device found, idVendor=0e8d, idProduct=7612, bcdDevice= 1.00
[ 4902.257693] usb 4-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=4
[ 4902.257696] usb 4-4: Product: Wireless
[ 4902.257699] usb 4-4: Manufacturer: MediaTek Inc.
[ 4902.257702] usb 4-4: SerialNumber: 000000000
[ 4902.407110] usb 4-4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 4902.423746] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0: ASIC revision: 76120044
[ 4902.449625] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0: ROM patch build: 20141115060606a
[ 4902.628152] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0: Firmware Version: 0.0.00
[ 4902.628157] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0: Build: 1
[ 4902.628158] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0: Build Time: 201507311614____
[ 4903.321223] ieee80211 phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[ 4903.321757] usbcore: registered new interface driver mt76x2u
[ 4903.329192] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0 wlp0s20f0u4: renamed from wlan0
[...]

interestingly, these messages also showed up though I'm not sure what triggered them since I haven't been able to change the device to monitoring mode as far as I'm aware.

[...]
[15238.068962] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0 wlp0s20f0u4: entered promiscuous mode
[15238.079928] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0 wlp0s20f0u4: left promiscuous mode
[15242.851367] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0 wlp0s20f0u4: entered promiscuous mode
[15249.852603] mt76x2u 4-4:1.0 wlp0s20f0u4: left promiscuous mode

Thank you for your time 🙇

[Mister-X-]

What version of aircrack-ng are you running? Please give an exact version (don't just say "latest", we need a version number).
Could you also try the current version of airmon-ng from the master branch?

What is the output of 'ifconfig -a'?

[Reo]

Sorry for missing that, I'll clear those up:

$ aircrack-ng
  Aircrack-ng 1.7  - (C) 2006-2022 Thomas d'Otreppe

checking man aircrack-ng also gives "Version: 1.7.0"

$ ifconfig -a
enp0s31f6: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether c0:18:03:5d:dc:b6  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 16  memory 0x62280000-622a0000

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 43  bytes 7113 (6.9 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 43  bytes 7113 (6.9 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlp0s20f3: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether ca:5e:37:12:1d:87  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 160280  bytes 163436822 (155.8 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 60708  bytes 12686403 (12.0 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlp0s20f0u4: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.0.0.215  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 10.0.0.255
        inet6 2607:fea8:4325:b100:d6e:a518:b47:99ba  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x0<global>
        inet6 fe80::f7e5:c441:a885:3868  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        inet6 2607:fea8:4325:b100::a8b0  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x0<global>
        ether 00:c0:ca:b2:f5:26  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 237581  bytes 143111976 (136.4 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 2  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 165880  bytes 23707577 (22.6 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

[Mister-X-]

Could you try the airmon-ng version from current git master and run airmon-ng --verbose?

[Reo]

The issues seemed to be from the version I installed via dnf, everything works as expected now after building from source (master branch):

$ aircrack-ng
  Aircrack-ng 1.7 rev e82138cb - (C) 2006-2022 Thomas d'Otreppe

$ sudo airmon-ng check kill
Killing these processes:

    PID Name
   1170 wpa_supplicant

$ sudo airmon-ng start wlp0s20f0u4
PHY		Interface	Driver		Chipset
phy1	wlp0s20f0u4	mt76x2u		MediaTek Inc. MT7612U 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
		(mac80211 monitor mode vif enabled for [phy1]wlp0s20f0u4 on [phy1]wlp0s20f0u4mon)
		(mac80211 station mode vif disabled for [phy1]wlp0s20f0u4)
phy0	wlp0s20f3	iwlwifi		Intel Corporation Tiger Lake PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 11)

Sorry it was such a trivial solution and thank you for the quick response!

[Mister-X-]

You can also keep using the version from dnf, and just use airmon-ng from git if you are more comfortable. You likely have to place it in /usr/local/sbin and call it airmon-ng and make sure it's executable. It should take precedence over the installed version. You can verify that by running which airmon-ng after putting it in /usr/local/sbin.