• openssl
• make
• gcc

 wget http://download.aircrack-ng.org/aircrack-ng-0.9.3.tar.gz
 tar -zxvf aircrack-ng-0.9.3.tar.gz
 cd aircrack-ng-0.9.3
 make
 make install
 

After you do “make install” then try to use any of the Aircrack-ng suite commands, you get the error message “command not found” or similar. Your system will look for the Aircrack-ng commands in the directories defined by the PATH command.

Normally, the Aircrack-ng suite programs and man pages are placed in:

 /usr/local/bin
 /usr/local/sbin
 /usr/local/man

On your system, to determine which directories have the Aircrack-ng programs enter the following. If using “locate” be sure to first run “updatedb”.

 locate aircrack-ng
 locate airmon-ng

or

 find / -name aircrack-ng
 find / -name airmon-ng

Once you know the directories (exclude the source directories) then determine which directories are in your PATH. To see which directories are included in PATH on your particular system enter:

 echo $PATH

It should show something like:

 /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

At this point compare the actual locations with the directories in your PATH. If the directories are missing from your PATH then you have a few options:

• Add the directories to your PATH. See the one or more of the following web sites for details of how to do this:

 http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/howto/basic/path.shtml
 http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-print-path-variable/
 http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/prepostpath.htm
 http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie3_1_4.htm

• Change to the particular directory with “cd” and then run the commands from within the directory. Don't forget to add “./” in front of each command.

• Specify the full path for each command. So if Aircrack-ng is located in the “/usr/local/bin” directory then run the command as “/usr/local/bin/aircrack-ng”.

• Specify the location prefix when installing. Lets say you have /usr/bin and /usr/sbin directories in your PATH, then do “make prefix=/usr install”. This will install the programs to /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.

On Debian-based distros, if you get something similar to:

/bin/sh: line 0: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-amd64-generic/build: No such file or directory
Makefile.inc:66: *** /lib/modules/2.6.15-28-amd64-generic/build is missing, please set KERNELPATH.
Stop.

Solution:

The build directory gets installed together with the kernel headers, so either you lack the correct headers or your KERNELPATH is wrong. Please check that `uname -r` returns “2.6.15-28-amd64-generic”.

Do a “sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`” or just “sudo apt-get install linux-headers”.

If uname returns exactly that string and the current headers are installed, the remove the headers and install them again. Also check /usr/src for installed header files, maybe it got mixed up for whatever reason.

In the above examples, needless to say, change “2.6.15-28-amd64-generic” to whatever you are running.

If you get something similar to:

 crypto.h:12:26: error: openssl/hmac.h: No such file or directory
 crypto.h:13:25: error: openssl/sha.h: No such file or directory
 crypto.h:15:25: error: openssl/rc4.h: No such file or directory
 crypto.h:16:25: error: openssl/aes.h: No such file or directory

Solution: You are missing the OpenSSL development package. Depending on the distribution, download and install openssl-devel or libssl-devel (libssl-dev /Ubuntu/). Or worst case, install it from source: http://www.openssl.org.

If you get something similar to:

 wesside-ng.c:54:18: error: zlib.h: No such file or directory

Solution: You are missing the zlib development package. Depending on the distribution, download and install zlib-devel. Or worst case, install it from source: http://www.zlib.net.

You get something similar to:

 radiotap-parser.h:29: error: conflicting types for ‘__le64’
 /usr/include/linux/types.h:158: error: previous declaration of ‘__le64’ was here

See this thread for a solution.

Important note: airodump-ng and aireplay-ng will not work under OSX natively. Which means, injection and capture will have to use other means. If you have an intel Mac (any recent-ish Mac is), check out the VMware Fusion option which is mentioned lower on this page.

The simplest and easiest way to install on Mac OS X is via Macports. You simply do “sudo port install aircrack-ng”.

Alternatively, use the following instructions:

1. Make sure you have Xcode installed on your Mac, which can be found on the installer CD/DVD which came with your Mac (or downloaded).
2. After getting the source you can do a simple “make && sudo make install” from the untarred directory.
3. When you use the stable, you need to rename the Makefile.osx to Makefile and when you use the dev version it will autodetect you are using Darwin and compile fine.

Optional is openssl-dev and sqlite3 which can be installed through fink

Important Note: Virtualization solutions (VMware/VirtualBox/Virtual PC/…) only work with USB cards. Card that are PCI/MiniPCI/PCMCIA/CardBus/Express Card/PCI Express/PCI-X/MiniPCI Express won't work at all.

• VMWare Workstation 6.02, VMWare Player 2.02 (freeware) or VMWare Fusion beta for intel based Mac's
• Wireless USB with one of the following chipsets:
  • rtl8187
  • rt2570
  • rt73
• Approximately 2Gb of hard disk space

Important note: VMWare Workstation 6.5 (and maybe Player 2.5 too) is known not to work correctly with rtl8187 driver. It uses the whole CPU and it seems to be hanging (it is really slow) for an unknown reason.

1. Install VMWare Workstation or Player
2. Download this VMware image here or via BitTorrent and unpack it somewhere.
3. Start VMware and select “open”. (Open the virtual machine)
4. Attach your USB adapter.
5. If the USB adapter is recognized automatically you'll find a small USB icon in the lower right corner of your VMWare window. If not you have to attach it manually.

Notes:

• Uncompress the file on a filesystem that supports large files; NTFS, ext3, … (all FAT filesystems, including FAT32, do not support large files).
• Use 7-zip or Winrar (at least latest stable version) on Windows. For Linux (and other OSes), use p7zip (it should be in the repositories of your distribution).
• Here are a few reasons why the download doesn't work:
  • That sounds logical but make sure the URL is correct.
  • Check your DNS, make sure it can resolve “download.aircrack-ng.org” (by the way, the server answers to ping). If it doesn't, use OpenDNS (Primary: 208.67.222.222 - Secondary: 208.67.220.220).
• You don't need any driver for wireless adapters (and other USB adapters) on the OS running VMware.
• The login credentials for the image are user id “root” with password “root”. On some versions the password is “toor”.
• The FAQ has some limited information about running the Aircrack-ng suite under VMWare.

On VMware Player, the device should be shown in the title bar, click on it to activate it. On VMware Workstation, use menu “VM –> Removable devices –> USB” and then select the device:

It will automatically unplug the device from Windows and attach it to the virtual machine.

The drivers can be loaded via the menu inside the VM: