How To Install Kali Linux In Gnome Boxes and Mount USB Wifi Adapters For Wifi pen-testing!

In this tutorial, we will see,

1. How to install Kali Linux Virtual Machine in Gnome Boxes
2. How to Mount USB Wi-Fi adapters to the Virtual Machine for wifi pen-testing

Video Tutorial

If you prefer a video tutorial, here’s one I made:

Written Tutorial

First, make sure you have GNOME Boxes installed on your system. If not, you can install it using a package manager like apt or dnf. Alternatively, you can go to the software center of yor linux distribution and install it from there.

Setup Virtual Machine

Download Kali Virtual Machine Image

Go to this link to download a Kali Virtual Machine image. You’ll see 4 types of images, but don’t get scared. Any Of these images should work with Gnome Boxes other than the Hyper-V one. Hyper-V is a windows thing. Gnome Boxes uses qemu underneath so the qemu image should work best. But, I personally have tested the VirtualBox image and it works just fine. So, I recommend the VirtualBox image.

Just click on the dowload button on the bottom left corner and it will start downloading. The file being downloaded is a compressed file. To use it, we first have to extract it. After extraction, you get a folder with two files, one with the .vdi extension and the other one with the .vbox extension. To run the virtual machine, we have to open the .vdi file with GNOME Boxes.

Now open Gnome Boxes and click on the plus icon on the top left corner. Then select Install from File and locate the .vdi file and open it. At this point, you’ll be prompted a window that looks something like this,

Create & Run Virtual Machine

Here, you can select how much RAM and storage space you wnat it to use. It is also recommended to select the Operating System as Debian Testing, as kali is based on the testing branch of debian. After that, click on the Create button and your virtual machine will start.

Mount Wifi Cards

If you want to mount your Wifi adapter to the virtual machine, right click on it whele it’s running and go to preference. while runnin is the key word here. You cannot mount a device while the virtual machine is not running. In the preference window, go to the Devices & Shares tab.

Here will be the list of devices plugged into your host. You can use the toggle switch to mount and unmount the devices. That’s it. Happy Hacking!