Raspberry Pi-Tail Zero 2 W setup

Despite the setup process is pretty easy, it requires some problem solving which takes time. Additionally, the official guide https://www.kali.org/docs/arm/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w-pi-tail/ is outdated, so I decided to make my own.

Refer to https://github.com/Re4son/RPi-Tweaks/blob/master/pi-tail/Pi-Tail.HOWTO for some general tips. But keep in mind that the values may vary.

📱 Devices

• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
• microSD card (32 GB and higher)
• Micro USB cable to power Raspberry Pi
• OTG adapter and cable to connect to a smartphone
• Android smartphone
• [optional] Laptop/PC (with Linux preferably)

💾 Software

• Kali Linux ARM image https://www.kali.org/get-kali/#kali-arm I used Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (PiTail)
• Your favourite tool to write an image to microSD card. Both, Rufus and Raspberry Pi Imager work well.
• Smartphone applications:
  • Any SSH client. For example, ConnectBot, JuiceSSH, Termux with SSH installed.
  • [optional] VNC client. For example, RealVNC
  • [optional] Hacker's Keyboard

👾 Installation and setup

1. Download Kali Linux ARM image and write it to microSD card
2. Enable WiFi hotspot on the smartphone and connect to it from a laptop. Say, we have a hotspot HomeWiFi and R4t4m4h4tt4 as a password.
3. On the laptop execute ip a to get assigned IP address and IP mask. For example, 192.168.123.x/24 (or 255.255.255.0 as IP mask)
4. On the laptop execute route -v to get Gateway IP address. For example, 192.168.123.173
5. Go to BOOT partition on the microSD card and edit interfaces file:
   • Rename iface sepultura inet static to iface HomeWiFi inet static
   • Change IP address from 192.168.43.254 to 192.168.123.254
   • Change gateway IP address from 192.168.43.1 to 192.168.123.173
   • [optional] Remove entries for mobile-1 and mobile-2 interfaces.
6. [optional] If you want to keep the hotspot password in secret, use the command wpa_passphrase <SSID> <PASSWORD>. In our case the command will be wpa_passphrase HomeWiFi R4t4m4h4tt4. This will generate a config. DON'T FORGET TO REMOVE PLAIN TEXT PASSWORD!

network={
	ssid="HomeWiFi"
	psk=5c69230fd516a10840baf62eff26449e7edd6b821b5bdec86ca2086457674ca4
}

7. At BOOT partition find and edit wpa_supplicant.conf file:
   • Add id_str="HomeWiFi" string to the config and write it to the file. The larger number in priority= parameter, the higher the priority.
   • [optional] Remove the other entries in the file.
8. Insert microSD card to Raspberry Pi. Plugin power cable to the Raspberry Pi. The first boot may take some time (~10 min)
9. [optional] You can connect Raspberry Pi directly to smartphone via OTG adapter and micro-USB cable.
   OTG adapter in smartphone, standard cable in Pi-Tail power (USB is free for dongles). More details are here: https://github.com/Re4son/RPi-Tweaks/blob/master/pi-tail/Pi-Tail.README
10. Wait until the Raspberry Pi connects to your hotspot (you can check the number of connected devices).
11. Connect from smartphone via installed SSH-client to SSH server kali@192.168.123.254 default password kali
12. Launch an update in terminal sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade