rt73 (Belkin F5D7050) driver + monitor mode

rt73 (Belkin F5D7050) driver + monitor mode Saturday, 11 November 06

This is a modified version of the Linux RT73 driver by Ralink that allows to turn on the MONITOR mode. I tested it with my Belkin wifi USB dongle (exact adapter hardware specified below).

USAGE

make
insmod ./rt73.ko
ifconfig rausb0 192.168.1.4
iwconfig rausb0 mode monitor
iwconfig rausb0 channel 11 (or whatever channel you want to sniff)
tcpdump -n -i rausb0 -s 1500

Note that I had to modify this driver because the serialmonkey driver at http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/ does not work with my card:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 050d:705a Belkin Components

It's a F5D7050 that is reported to work but actually it does not work.

The original driver from Ralink didn't included my USB vendor/device ID so I added it.

SOFTWARE TESTED

tcpdump and kismet appear to work perfectly. For kismet you have to define the following "device" in the config file:

source=rt2500,rausb0,rausb0

I'll up date this page once I find some time to test more programs.

BUGS (many)

This driver is a quick and dirty hack, once you switched the monitor mode on there is no way to turn back to normal operation.

What you can try is the following instead:

iwconfig rausb0 mode managed
ifconifg rausb0 down
rmmod rt73

Then disconnect & reconnect your USB wifi card and reload the driver using it in the standard way.

WARNING: this procedure will probably freeze your kernel.

I'll try to fix the issue later, but I'm not sure since datasheets of the chipset are not public! Apparently serialmonkey's guys have some kind of deal with Ralink in order to use but don't distribute the specification. I learned what register to set to put the card into the monitor mode from their driver.

DOWNLOAD

Get the source code here.

For feedbacks drop me an email (antirez - gmail - com)

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