RTL-SDR setup on Kali Linux

RTL-SDR, HackRF, and LimeSDR are great tools on which to explore radio concepts. The remainder of this article will assume RTL-SDR as the software defined radio of choice and Kali as the linux distribution. The Goal of this publication is to explore the domain of IMSI sniffing.

Objectives

• install pyenv 3.10
• install gr-gsm

In order to limit environment unstability with python dependencies lets utilize ‘pyenv’ as a Python manager to setup host globally for this project. To begin, a few ‘apt’ packages need to be installed:

sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install -y \
    cmake \
    autoconf \
    libtool \
    git \
    curl \
    wget \
    pkg-config \
    build-essential \
    python3-docutils \
    libcppunit-dev \
    libosmocodec0 \
    libosmogsm-doc \
    libosmosdr0 \
    libosmocodec-doc \
    libosmosdr-dev \
    libosmocoding0 \
    libosmocoding-doc \
    libosmocore \
    libosmocore-dev \
    libosmocore-doc \
    libosmocore \
    libosmocore-dev \
    libosmocore-doc \
    libosmocore-utils \
    libosmoctrl0 \
    libosmoctrl-doc \
    swig \
    doxygen \
    liblog4cpp5-dev \
    python3-scipy \
    python3-scapy \
    python3-numpy \
    gnuradio-dev \
    gr-osmosdr

PYENV

Next, we can begin installing pyenv with the following commands.

Installs pyenv

curl https://pyenv.run | bash

Updates pyenv python version listing

pyenv update

Configures pyenv PATH variable

cd ~/.pyenv && src/configure && make -C src

Install Python 3.10 and set local/global environment.

pyenv install 3.10 && pyenv local 3.10 && pyenv global 3.10

GR-GSM

Install gr-gsm package:

git clone https://github.com/bkerler/gr-gsm.git
cd gr-gsm
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
mkdir $HOME/.grc_gnuradio/ $HOME/.gnuradio/
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig