Wi-Fi adapter Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 does not capture data packets in monitor mode (SOLVED)

Description of the problem: airodump-ng and similar programs for auditing Wi-Fi security do not capture data in monitor mode when using a Wi-Fi adapter with Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 chipset.

This problem is discussed on the forum in these threads:

• https://forum.aircrack-ng.org/index.php?topic=2554.0
• https://forum.aircrack-ng.org/index.php/topic,2545.0.html

That is, monitor mode works, but the wireless adapter does not capture anything.

One of the users (madder / ahmedmadder1) wrote a reason and solution. He noticed that the Atheros QCA9377 in airodump works fine on Kali versions released in 2018 since the Atheros QCA9377 uses firmware-5 (firmware version 5) in these versions.

But the problem appears when using firmware-6 on Kali versions released in 2020 and 2019. The user used firmware-5 from 2018 and everything started working as it should.

This user has extracted the fifth version of the firmware and uploaded it to GitHub.

Now if in Kali Linux you check the contents of the firmware folder for the Atheros QCA9377:

ls -l /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/

You can see that there are both the fifth and sixth versions:

итого 1636
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 304308 сен 23 11:11 board-2.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8124 сен 23 11:11 board.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 605908 сен 23 11:11 firmware-5.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 751436 сен 23 11:11 firmware-6.bin

Therefore, you can try to uninstall the sixth version. And if that doesn't help, then download the version from GitHub.

Be sure to start by creating a backup (in case something goes wrong):

cp -R /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377 ~/

Remove the sixth version:

sudo rm /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-6.bin

For the changes to take effect, reboot:

reboot

Check with airodump or another program.

If this did not help, or if the fifth version is missing in your distribution, then download the version from the github:

sudo git clone https://github.com/ahmedmadder1/airodump-ng-not-showing-any-data-Atheros-QCA9377-.git
cd airodump-ng-not-showing-any-data-Atheros-QCA9377-

Remove the firmware (it is assumed that you have already made a backup as shown above):

sudo rm -rf /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377

Copy the downloaded fifth version to the place where it should be on the system:

sudo cp -R QCA9377 /lib/firmware/ath10k/

For the changes to take effect, reboot:

reboot

Data capture should now work in airodump and other programs.

Users confirm that any of the described methods works.