Why does my USB wireless adapter stop working when connected to a VM running BackTrack?

Question

I wanted to know why my USB wireless adapter stops working when it's been connected to VMware? When it is disconnected from the VM (connect to host), it works like normal.

Result for lsusb:

Bus 1 Device 2: ID 148f:2070 Ralink Technology, Corp.
Bus 1 Device 1: ID 0000:0000
Bus 2 Device 2: ID 0e0f:0002
Bus 2 Device 1: ID 0000:0000

Result for ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:28:D8:45
          inet addr:192.168.1.3  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:461 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:299 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:276800 (270.3 KiB)  TX bytes:50080 (48.9 KiB)
          Base address:0x2000 Memory:d8920000-d8940000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Answer 1

You probably don't have the correct driver and/or configuration installed inside the VM.

Start with lsusb, make sure it's recognized, then check dmesg to see if a driver got loaded, then ifconfig -a to see if maybe it's just waiting for you to configure its address.

Answer 2

You'll want to ensure that the USB adapter is compatible with the USB redirection in VMWare.

From there, you'll want to ensure the wireless adapter is also supported in the Linux distro that BackTrack is built on, and that there's a driver loaded for it.

Beyond that be aware that BT is VERY picky about which wireless adapter chipsets will work for the wireless sniffing/cracking utilities.

I would assume that's what you want to do, as most (all?) of the other stuff in BT could be done via the regular VMware networking bridge to the host. :)

Hope that helps...