MacBook Kali Networking

MacBook Air Kali Network Connection

After installation of standard Kali Linux on the MacBook Air, we will need to get it online. Two main interfaces to get up and running are:

Wired - Ethernet connection.
Wireless - WiFi connection.

Wired Ethernet: Enable Apple Thunderbolt WiFi dongle

Plugin the wifi dongle into the Thunderbolt 2 port of the Macbook.
Connect a RJ45 network cable to the switch
Reboot Kali Linux. In my case, rebooting allows Kali to detect and enable the Thunderbolt ethernet dongle.

After reboot of the laptop, this allows Kali to detect and enable the Thunderbolt ethernet dongle. Opening a shell terminal and type:

ip a

reveals that the ethernet port (eth0) is visible and acquired an IP address from my local network. The drop down menu also shows "Wired connection 1".

Update Kali Linux

From the shell terminal we:

Perform an update:

sudo apt update

Perform a full upgrade (this may take several minutes):

sudo apt full-upgrade -y

Remove packages no longer needed by system:

sudo apt autoremove

Cleanup packages cache:

sudo apt autoclean

Then restart the laptop

Wireless Connection: WiFi module on the Macbook Air

WIFI Chipset Enumeration

First we try to identify what type of chipset is in this Macbook Air. From the shell terminal we type:

lspci

This reveals the wifi adapter to be a Broadcom BCM4360:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)

From experience, this Broadcom wifi driver has been problematic to get working. However, I have found a reliable method to get it working.

Method:

Tip: ensure the laptop is still connected to the internet during this procedure.

One resource that activates the Broadcom BCM4360 wireless module work under Kali is a Github repository by TadakaSuryaTeja:

https://github.com/TadakaSuryaTeja/BroadcomInstaller2021

To enable this, we do the following on the command line (slight variation to the instructions on the Github page):

Clone the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/TadakaSuryaTeja/BroadcomInstaller2021.git

Change to the Broadcominstall2021 folder:

cd Broadcominstall2021

Make the Broadcom.sh shell script executable:

chmod +x ./Broadcom.sh

Run the Broadcom.sh with sudo privileges:

sudo ./Broadcom.sh

Choose option 1. This will install and configure required drivers and automatically reboot the laptop.

After reboot, we can check two ways if the wireless driver is active:

From the command line type:

ip a

and this should show a wireless (wlan0) network interface.

From the Network toolbar icon on the top right area, click on it and you should see options for "Wi-Fi Networks". From here, you should be able to connect to your local wifi network.

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