The Wi-Fi card built into most laptops works on Parrot Linux for normal networking. Wireless auditing is different: tools such as Aircrack-ng, Kismet and Bettercap need a chipset whose Linux driver supports monitor mode and packet injection, and many internal cards do not. The usual answer is an external USB adapter with a supported chipset. The list of Parrot Linux supported Wi-Fi chipsets below is a starting point.
Parrot Linux supported Wi-Fi chipsets and adapters
This is a community-reported list carried over from the original Parrot documentation. It is not complete, and hardware revisions matter: manufacturers sometimes change the chipset without changing the product name, so check the revision before you buy.
| Adapter | Chipset | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Alfa AWUS036NHA | Atheros AR9271 | 2.4 GHz |
| TP-Link TL-WN722N | Atheros AR9271 | Version 1 only; later hardware revisions use a different chipset |
| Alfa AWUS036NH | Ralink RT3070 | 2.4 GHz |
| Blueway N9000 | Ralink RT3070 | 2.4 GHz |
| Panda PAU09 N600 | Ralink RT5572 | Dual band |
| Alfa AWUS036ACH | Realtek RTL8812AU | Dual band; older kernels need a separately installed (DKMS) driver |
Other chipsets on the original list: Ralink RT3572, Atheros AR9485 and Qualcomm Atheros QCA9337.
Find out which chipset you have
lsusb
lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net
lsusb lists USB adapters. The lspci command shows internal cards together with the kernel driver in use.
Check monitor mode and injection
List the modes the driver supports. If monitor appears, monitor mode is available:
iw list | grep -A 10 "Supported interface modes"
Then put the interface into monitor mode and run the injection test from the Aircrack-ng suite. Replace wlan0 with the name shown by ip link; the monitor interface is often called wlan0mon:
sudo airmon-ng start wlan0
sudo aireplay-ng --test wlan0mon
Only test networks you own or are authorised to assess.
Adapters in a virtual machine
A virtual machine does not see the host’s internal Wi-Fi card as a wireless device; the guest gets a virtual wired connection. To use monitor mode inside a VM, plug in a USB adapter and attach it to the guest through the hypervisor’s USB settings. See Parrot on VirtualBox.
For other hardware see what Parrot supports.