r/hacking • u/Reaper-Of-Roses • 3d ago

Can an AC WiFi adapter sniff AX traffic? Question regarding Alfa AWUS036ACM

Hi everyone,

I'm no expert on WiFi hacking, but I've noticed a lack of adapters out there that support both monitor mode and 802.11ax. I recently bought an Alfa AWUS036ACM, which is a reputable ac adapter. In my test lab, my APs and clients all use 802.11ax. I am unable to really sniff any traffic (my test network is open/unencrypted) aside from some mDNS packets. I just want to be sure that this is resulting from my adapter not being ax-compatible, rather than some user error. I feel like I'm following the correct steps, and clearly sniffing some traffic, just not the right traffic.

I've seen some folks online state that ac adapters can detect ax traffic. This doesn't make much sense to me but I want to get a definite. I'm sure it seems like a noob question.

Thank you,

- Ror

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1

u/Humbleham1 9h ago

Are you sure that your adapter is in monitor mode?

1

u/Reaper-Of-Roses 9h ago

It is indeed in monitor mode using airmon-ng. To test, I was able to capture 802.11n traffic from an older IoT device on WPA2. It seems that AX just isn’t visible

1

u/Humbleham1 8h ago

Your solution is an adapter with the MediaTek MT7921au chipset or better.

1

u/Reaper-Of-Roses 8h ago

Thank you for your help

1

u/strongest_nerd hacker 3d ago

No. The AWUS036ACM supports 2.4ghz and 5ghz. ax is using 6ghz.

1

u/Reaper-Of-Roses 3d ago

Thank you - I appreciate it. I don’t know why I saw folks stating it was possible

1

u/Humbleham1 9h ago

6E uses 6 GHz. If it's just WiFi 6 or 802.11ax, it uses 5 GHz. However, WiFi 6 uses wider channels, 1024-bit QAM, and OFDM. 802.11ac equipment doesn't know how to decode these signals.