As you learned either in one of my books, courses, or in the Internet, there are many challenges with different wireless adapters, Linux, and wireless penetration testing tools. This is a fact especially when trying to perform promiscuous monitoring and injecting packets into the wireless network.
The following are some of the most popular wireless adapters used by penetration testers (ethical hackers) in the industry.
**Note**: If you know of others and have some success stories, please feel free to contribute by requesting a pull request or by opening a GitHub issue.
- [Select a Field-Tested Kali Linux Compatible Wireless Adapter](https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/select-field-tested-kali-linux-compatible-wireless-adapter-0180076/)
- [Best Wireless Network Adapter for Wi-Fi ](https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/buy-best-wireless-network-adapter-for-wi-fi-hacking-2018-0178550/)
Atheros chipsets have been used by many pen testers in the industry because the ability to perform well with many different systems and because it is open source. The main challenge with these drivers is that many laptops have migrated from PCMCIA bus and support for external Atheros-based cards is pretty limited.
The RTL8187 driver is used in many Alfa adapters (USB adapters). The RTL8187 driver is supported by the Linux kernel for years and has been the choice for many pen testers out there. The main challenge with this driver is the lack of 802.11 a, n, and ac support. It can be used for injecting packets into the wireless network and it works with MAC OS X.
Is the newer version of the AWUS306H and provides support for 802.11n and it is smaller than its predecessor. One of the main challenges out there is that it is not supported by MAC OS X with KisMAC. However, many people use them in laptops or desktop machines using Kali Linux.
The TP-LINK TL-WN722N uses the Atheros AR9271 Chipset and is a wireless N adapter. Newer versions may not use the same chipset and you may run into problems with Kali Linux.
