USB Wifi with VMWare and BackTrack

I also posted this to my original blog but wanted to post it here as well.

I read about this in a paper on the SANS Reading Room about a month ago and finally got around to trying it over the weekend. The paper is available here - http://tinyurl.com/24o95n

In six steps you can use a wireless USB adapter within a VMware virtual machine.

Supplies used:

Windows XP SP2 laptop

VMware Workstation 6 - http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/

Belkin Wireless G USB Network Adapter http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=179211

BackTrack 2.0 Final ISO - http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

IronGeek's bootable CD vmx file - http://www.irongeek.com/downloads/live-cd-iso.vmx



Assumptions:

Windows is completely patched.

VMware Workstation has been installed on the laptop

Belkin Wireless drivers are not already installed on the laptop and the adapter is not connected to the laptop (yet).

Tasks

Step one - download the BackTrack 2.0 ISO to a directory on you hard drive (I used C:\Virtual)

Step two - download IronGeek's bootable CD VMX file to the same directory as the ISO. Now open the file in a text editor. Set the Memory to be at least 256MB by changing this section of the file:

Original
# Memory
#####
memsize = "128"
# memsize = "256"
# memsize = "512"
# memsize = "768"

Updated
# Memory
#####
# memsize = "128"
memsize = "256"
# memsize = "512"
# memsize = "768"

Configure the boot objects to use the boot CD:

Original
#####
# IDE Storage
#####
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
#Edit line below to change ISO to boot from
ide1:0.fileName = "myiso.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

Updated
#####
# IDE Storage
#####
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
#Edit line below to change ISO to boot from
ide1:0.fileName = "bt2final.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

The file should be in the same directory as the BackTrack iso. Additionally you can update the display name and annotation lines in the file to display better descriptors

Step three - launch VMware Workstation, open the bootable CD VMX file and start the virtual machine.

Step four - You will likely receive an error about the video settings not being supported - I used option 0. Before pressing 0, I inserted the Belkin USB card, this causes Windows to recognize the card as a VMware USB device instead of the Belkin wireless device.

Step five - logon to BackTrack.

Step six - launch Wlassistant and verify that the Belkin USB card is finding other devices around you.

Final result

The BackTrack Cd is now capable of using the Belkin wireless card to scan for other resources from inside the virtual machine without the drivers ever being installed on the XP or Vista host.

This also should work with VMPlayer (in fact IronGeek has a video tutorial on cracking WEP keys using a similar setup - http://tinyurl.com/25zz98) and just about any Windows XP or Vista workstation (PC or laptop). It may or may not work for Intel based Macs or Linux workstations. This may also work with other wireless USB adapters.

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Be Safe
James