Simple things are the hardest

Do you ever run into a situation when you are trying to accomplish something very simple but you get stuck for hours and you just don’t want to give up? That just happened to me while I was trying to connect a wireless adopter to my Kali virtual machine.

I was studying how to analyze network traffics using tools such as Wireshark and tcpdump tonight. Even though it’s not necessary for learning the tools, I came across an example on the OSCP course content that required the wireless connection.

It was frustrating because I had done it before but I just didn’t document how I did it and couldn’t find any good instruction anywhere on the internet. I’m usually good at researching: apparently, not this time. I was using Virtualbox instead of VMware before so I thought maybe the wifi adopter was not compatible with the latter or I was just setting network configuration wrong.

It turned out that I had to add a network adopter to the VM and use a “Host” connection and manually enable the USB once I started the machine: So simple.

With a wifi adopter connected to a virtual machine(Kali), I can hack into devices that are connected to the same internet. (Don’t do this if you don’t have permission!!)

I wrote down detailed instructions this time and I’m also thinking about creating a how-to video & documentation on it for other noobs who are pulling their hair out.

For upcoming weeks, I have a few cybersecurity project ideas I’m interested in.

• Use Wireshark and tcpdump to analyze network traffic on the home internet and get comfortable with different filters.
• Practice Bash scripting and automate some pen testing tasks.
• Configure IDS and IPS
• Research how bind shells and reverse shells differ from each other and how it’s affected by the victim’s security setting.
• Get comfortable with Power shell commands
• Linux command practice: using multiple arguments for optimized results.

I’m sure I’ll come up with more ideas as I study more this week!

Happy hacking!!