Wifi Card Issues with Macchanger?

Support Tools and Software
1

Hey y’all,

New Linux user, fell in love with Parrot and have been having a blast messing around with it on the backend to get accustomed to everything. I have an old Macbook pro mid 2012 that I
wanted to give new life and purpose to. I’m now starting slowly into the cybersec tools and the first thing I tried was macchanger, but I am unable to change my wlp3s0 MAC.

So I do the typical sudo ifconfig wlp3s0 down, sudo macchanger -r wlp3s0 (or -a, -A, -m, anything really) and I always get the Device is currently in use or you do not have permission error in return. I tested my pendrive on an HP laptop and was able to change it’s MAC with the same series of commands.

Is there an issue with the Macbooks wifi adapter/drivers? I know this was a problem when I first attempted using Kali and wifi wouldn’t work, which is why I jumped to Parrot. I’ve even disabled the network-manager service as well, but always get that same response.

I was hoping someone has seen this problem, I do have a dozen HP Elitebooks I could use for my pentesting training, but I really wanted to bring new life and purpose to this old macbook that i’ve had for 12 years now.

  • Parrot OS 6

  • Logs/Terminal output (use pastebin or similar services):

  • Screenshots:

2

Update; tested a new macbook pro, same issue. I have theorized it’s to do with the Apple Proprietary Wireless adapter having built in security features.

It would be great to circumvent that security, but i’m considering grabbing

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09KTDXPY3/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_plhdr=t&aaxitk=ed7496ef275bd2fe620f66cd0070dada&hsa_cr_id=0&qid=1708287563&sr=1-1-9e67e56a-6f64-441f-a281-df67fc737124&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_sccd_asin_0_title&pd_rd_w=ZfE3K&content-id=amzn1.sym.417820b0-80f2-4084-adb3-fb612550f30b%3Aamzn1.sym.417820b0-80f2-4084-adb3-fb612550f30b&pf_rd_p=417820b0-80f2-4084-adb3-fb612550f30b&pf_rd_r=AGK3RZRJDZ7TSG3M09T2&pd_rd_wg=xYZjY&pd_rd_r=f7d42896-aa52-4724-82ad-2c2568c9a143&th=1

if this will work with Parrot 6, and disabling the built in adapter.

3

We tried with a 2022 MacBook and did not encounter this error. Do you exacly know what wifi card this Macbook has? It should be an Intel

4

Thanks for looking in to this! This is the info I grabbed from hwinfo.

Model: “Apple AirPort Extreme”
Vendor: pci 0x14e4 “Broadcom”
Device: pci 0x4331 “BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n”
SubVendor: pci 0x106b “Apple Inc.”
SubDevice: pci 0x00f5 “AirPort Extreme”

It’s the same on the other macbook pro I tried, and I assumed it was a proprietary network adapter, but it’s possible I could be looking in the wrong place for the info.

5

If you want to use an external adapter, on Parrot you won’t have any particular problems (the one you sent is fine, although I recommend Ralink adapters). Instead, to use your Macbook’s internal card, doing some research I found that the driver you’re missing is part of the b43 family (BCM4331).

In this document, you can learn more about it and you should be able to install the driver (the firmware-b43-installer package is in our repositories):

http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/users/Drivers/b43/#CA-2d69d57417d3a5a55f969ba03bb196f8fb46a486_1

My recommendation is that you read everything in it for a better understanding. Let us know!

6

That’s good to know about the USB adapters, I was getting mixed information on the in-kernel drivers for them.

Unfortunately the b43 firmware I had checked already, they were actually pre-installed in the OS. I guess to clarify I have full wireless connectivity, it just won’t let me change the adapters MAC address even when turning the adapter to down and the network manager to stop.