10 February 2020

In this post we'll go through connecting the proxmark (and fixing any issues) on a fresh Kali 2019.4 install, and updating all aspects of the proxmark (bootrom and fullimage).

To start, update Kali and install dependencies

sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get install --no-install-recommends git ca-certificates build-essential pkg-config libreadline-dev gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-dev qtbase5-dev

Next, clone the Iceman fork of the proxmark3 project

git clone https://github.com/RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3.git

Change into the proxmark directory and build everything

cd proxmark && make clean && make all

If you've followed all of the steps so far, you shouldn't have any errors building the client and all supporting files. Next, plug in the proxmark and ensure it connects correctly by entering the following (you may need to sudo if you don't have those rights already):

dmesg

This should give you output similar to below.

Note: if you run into issues where the proxmark is connecting and getting disconnected shortly after, try:

1. Uninstall modemmanager - "apt remove modemmanager"

2. Enter "make udev" into the root directory of the proxmark folder

3. Try the button trick to flash it quickly - https://github.com/RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3/issues/35

Now, you'll more than likely want to update the proxmark to the latest bootrom/image. You can do so with the following command (if everything compiled correctly above).

./pm3-flash-all

Which should look like...

Yay! Now you should be up to date and ready to swipe some sick RFID cards. If you run into any issues, Google is a great friend :). When you run the proxmark client you should see something similar to the below screenshot.

If you see a lot of gdk_pixbuf errors the easiest workaround is to change the Kali theme. Go to the "start" menu and then settings. Within Appearance, select another theme - Raleigh worked for me.

As always let us know if you have any questions or input. You can contact us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and of course from our website.

Happy Hacking!