Kali Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security Research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering.
Because Kali Linux is multi-platform, it gives you a strong, stable, known baseline to operate from regardless of where you use it: desktops, servers, virtual machines, live environments, cloud or containers.
Why is Kali Linux popular among hackers?
Kali is a popular distro among the security community due to its design, it incorporates tools oriented towards penetration testing, security research, computer forensics and reverse engineering. Kali Linux became mainstream popular thanks to the TV Series Mr. Robot.
How many tools does Kali Linux include?
Kali Linux is preinstalled with over 600 penetration-testing programs, including nmap (a port scanner), Wireshark (a packet analyzer), John the Ripper (a password cracker), Aircrack-ng (a software suite for penetration-testing wireless LANs), Burp suite and OWASP ZAP (both web application security scanners).
How secure is Kali Linux?
Kali Linux is developed in a secure location with only a small number of trusted people that are allowed to commit packages, with each package being signed by the developer. Kali also has a custom-built kernel that is patched for injection. This was primarily added because the development team found they needed to do a lot of wireless assessments.
Is Kali Linux portable?
Kali Linux can run natively when installed on a PC, can be booted from a live CD or live USB, or it can run within a virtual machine. It is a supported platform of the Metasploit Project's Metasploit Framework, a tool for developing and executing security exploits.
What Linux distribution is Kali Linux based on?
Kali Linux is based on Debian Wheezy. Most packages Kali uses are imported from the Debian repositories.
What version of Kali Linux should I download?
Each version of Kali Linux is optimized for a specific purpose or platform. First, you have to establish your system's architecture. If your system is 64-bit and you want to have a permanent installation, the Kali Linux ISO 64-bit is your choice. If you want to try Kali Linux without having to install it, the portable versions are the way to go.
Kali Linux was developed by Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns of Offensive Security through the rewrite of BackTrack, their previous forensics Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The third core developer Raphaël Hertzog joined them as Debian expert.
What's New
Kali Linux 2024.3 Release (Multiple transitions)
With summer coming to an end, so are package migrations, and Kali 2024.3 can now be released. You can now start downloading or upgrading if you have an existing Kali installation.
The summary of the changelog since the 2024.2 release from June is:
Qualcomm NetHunter Pro Devices - Qualcomm Snapdragon SDM845 SoC now supported
New Tools - 11x new tools in your arsenal
Our focus has been on a lot of behind the scenes updates and optimizations since the last release. There have been some messy migrations, with multiple stacks, all interrelating (transition have been like buses, all coming at once!). After the t64 transition finished up, it was straight into multiple other transitions: GCC 14, the glibc 2.40, and Python 3.12.
This last one is the most significant! This new Python release removed some long-deprecated APIs, breaking a fair number of packages. We have been busy fixing it all (weeks of work!), we are almost there, Python 3.12 will be the default in the next version of Kali - 2024.4. With Python 3.12, there will be a major change for users: it won't be possible to install Python packages with pip anymore. We wrote about that a year ago already, we invite you to read that again if you are an avid user of pip.
But that will be for the next Kali release, 2024.4, due by the end of the year. In the meantime, this new release 2024.3 still has Python 3.11 as the default Python interpreter.
An unfortunate consequence of this situation is that, as the whole Python 3.12 stack did not enter Kali-rolling yet, it also blocked other packages (seemingly unrelated to Python) from entering Kali-rolling. In other words, over the last 2 months the pace of updates in Kali-rolling went down, making this release less exciting than usual. This temporary slowdown should end in the coming days and weeks, as Python 3.12 finally hits Kali-rolling. At this point packages will resume flowing as usual, so users of Kali-rolling should be ready for a lot of updates!
To finish: apart from packaging, various projects either got started or continued to make progress, but are not ready for release just yet (such as having a new Kali forum, NetHunter Store updates and refreshing Kali-menu).
New Tools in Kali
This Kali release is about package updates. For end users its mostly about new tools added, for us, its about the updated stacks!
The community once again has set up and added various new tools. Long term contributor @Arszilla has been busy again! Here is a highlight of what new tools have been added (to the network repositories):
- goshs - Think SimpleHTTPServer, but written in Go, and with more features
- graudit - Grep Rough AUDIT: source code auditing tool
- gsocket - Allows two machines on different networks to communicate with each other
- hekatomb - Extract and decrypt all credentials from all domain computers (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- mxcheck - Info and security scanner for e-mail servers (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- netexec - Network service exploitation tool that helps automate assessing the security of large networks (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- netscanner - Network scanner & diagnostic tool with modern TUI (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- obsidian - Private and flexible writing app that adapts to the way you think
- sippts - Set of tools to audit SIP based VoIP Systems (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- sprayhound - Password spraying tool and Bloodhound integration (Submitted by @Arszilla)
- sqlmc - Check all URLls of a domain for SQL injections (Submitted by @Arszilla)
It goes without saying, that there has been numerous packages updates and new libraries as well.
Again, we want to shout out Arszilla and his multiple contributions. Always remember, you can contribute as well! We are always open for engagement from you if you want to get involved.
As hinted in our previous 2024.2 release, the Kali kernel is now also at 6.8.
Kali NetHunter Updates
Kali NetHunter 2024.3 has been held back for the the time being, as we are busy upating the build infrastructure. We will release the updated images when they are ready (hopefully in a few weeks), and talk whats new with them in the next Kali release 2024.4 (Bye Mana!).
Fortunately, we can say there are new supported devices! We are excited to release Kali NetHunter Pro images for devices with a Qualcomm Snapdragon SDM845 SoC (System on a Chip), such as:
- OnePlus 6/6T
- SHIFT SHIFT6mq
- Xiaomi Pocophone F1 (aka Poco F1)
Thanks to @Shubhamvis98 for his amazing work to make this happen!
There is also good news for Hungarian NetHunters! Check out "HnLVIP NetHunter" (1st August 2024), in this podcast by @hackeslangos featuring @yesimxev, talking about getting into NetHunter, an OffSec journey and more! You can listen to it here:
- Apple
- Spotify
Kali ARM SBC Updates
- We now pass QEMU_CPU=cortex-a72 to the build scripts when building an arm64 image on an amd64 host, which should speed things back up considerably.
- USBArmory devices should now properly start their DHCP server
- Support has been added for the Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module Wi-Fi device
- Raspberry Pi 5 kernel version has been bumped to 6.6
- additionally due to the new firmware in use on it, if you use an A2 rated microSD card, you should see 2-3x speedup of random access
- Pinebook kernel has been reverted back to a 6.1 kernel due to graphical glitches, and LCD not working on newer kernels
- We have cleaned up the build dependencies list, so we do not make users install a bunch of dependencies that are no longer used when building their own custom image.