USB Wifi Adapter connected to Kali Vbox but absent in ifconfig

Question

I installed VirtualBox-6.1.12-139181 for Windows 10 with Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.12 and imported the latest Kali VirtualBox Image kali-linux-2020.2a-vbox-amd64 from offensive-security

I bought a Realtek 802.11n USB WiFi adapter to work with in Kali Virtual Machine and it works with my Windows 10 immediately as plugged in. I set up a NAT Network and I added the corresponding USB Filter to my Virtual Machine USB settings to enable Kali to detect and use it as an external WiFi adapter.

When I boot up Kali and choose the USB adapter from Devices -> USB -> Realtek 802.11n, the device gets ticked and my Windows 10 stops recognizing it. But no Wireless capabilities appear in my network interface.

Running ifconfig in terminal only displays eth0 and lo but there is no wlan0

To confirm whether Kali recognizes the USB, I ran lsusb and it clearly displays

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:f179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 802.11n

Running dmesg on plugging the adapter gives this:

[ 3993.055075] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=f179, bcdDevice= 0.00
[ 3993.055082] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 3993.055086] usb 1-1: Product: 802.11n [ 3993.055091] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 3993.055095] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 00E0203010B

I am new to Linux and Kali and Virtual Machines so I have no idea what is wrong or what to do. I have spent like 5 hours on this and some people have asked to run commands but they just don't work. I have also tried app-compat commands but even if that shows wlan0 and wlan1 in ifconfig, none of those represent my USB WiFi adapter since the WiFi still doesn't discover or connect to APs and more importantly, they appear static since unplugging my USB adapter makes no difference.

Kindly help me solve this. Thanks!

Answer 1

install drivers first may solve the issue: https://github.com/gnab/rtl8812au