In past decades, ethical hacking and penetration testing were performed by only a few security experts. Now almost anyone can report security incidents. Ethical hacking tools allow you to scan, search and find the flaws and vulnerabilities within any company to help make their systems and applications more secure (as seen in the recent Top CVE’s exploited in the wild post published a few weeks ago).
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Today we’ll explore the best ethical hacking tools used by modern security researchers.
15 Ethical Hacking Tools You Can’t Miss
We’ve compiled some of the most popular penetration testing tools to help you through the first steps of a security investigation. You’ll find some of the classic tools that seem to have been around forever and some new tools that might not be familiar.
1. John the Ripper
John the Ripper is one of the most popular password crackers of all time. It’s also one of the best security tools available to test password strength in your operating system, or for auditing one remotely.
This password cracker is able to auto-detect the type of encryption used in almost any password, and will change its password test algorithm accordingly, making it one of the most intelligent password cracking tools ever.
This ethical hacking tool uses brute force technology to decipher passwords and algorithms such as:
- DES, MD5, Blowfish
- Kerberos AFS
- Hash LM (Lan Manager), the system used in Windows NT / 2000 / XP / 2003
- MD4, LDAP, MySQL (using third-party modules)
Another bonus is that JTR is open source, multi-platform and fully available for Mac, Linux, Windows and Android.
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2. Metasploit
Metasploit is an open source cyber-security project that allows infosec professionals to use different penetration testing tools to discover remote software vulnerabilities. It also functions as an exploit module development platform.
One of the most famous results of this project is the Metasploit Framework, written in Ruby, which enables you to develop, test and execute exploits easily. The framework includes a set of security tools that can be used to:
- Evade detection systems
- Run security vulnerability scans
- Execute remote attacks
- Enumerate networks and hosts
Metasploit offers three different versions of their software:
- Pro: ideal for penetration testing and IT security teams.
- Community: used by small companies and infosec students.
- Framework: the best for app developers and security researchers.
Supported platforms include:
- Mac OS X
- Linux
- Windows
3. Nmap
Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free open source security tool used by infosec professionals to manage and audit network and OS security for both local and remote hosts.
Despite being one of the oldest security tools in existence (launched in 1997), it continues to be actively updated and receives new improvements every year.
It’s also regarded as one of the most effective network mappers around, known for being fast and for consistently delivering thorough results with any security investigation.
What can you do with Nmap?
- Audit device security
- Detect open ports on remote hosts
- Network mapping and enumeration
- Find vulnerabilities inside any network
- Launch massive DNS queries against domains and subdomains
Supported platforms include:
- Mac OS X
- Linux, OpenBSD and Solaris
- Microsoft Windows
4. Wireshark
Wiresharkis a free open-source software that allows you to analyze network traffic in real time. Thanks to its sniffing technology, Wireshark is widely known for its ability to detect security problems in any network, as well as for its effectiveness in solving general networking problems.
While sniffing the network, you’re able to intercept and read results in human-readable format, which makes it easier to identify potential problems (such as low latency), threats and vulnerabilities.
Main features:
- Saves analysis for offline inspection
- Packet browser
- Powerful GUI
- Rich VoIP analysis
- Inspects and decompresses gzip files
- Reads other capture files formats including: Sniffer Pro, tcpdump (libpcap), Microsoft network monitor, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, etc.
- Supported ports and network devices: Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI.
- Protocol decryption includes but not limited to IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
- Exports results to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text
Wireshark supports up to 2000 different network protocols, and is available on all major operating systems including:
- Linux
- Windows
- Mac OS X
- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
5. OpenVAS
OpenVAS (also known as the old classic “Nessus”) is an open-source network scanner used to detect remote vulnerabilities in any hosts. One of the best-known network vulnerability scanners, it’s very popular among system administrators and DevOps and infosec professionals.
Main features
- Powerful web-based interface
- +50,000 network vulnerability tests
- Simultaneous multiple host scanning
- Able to stop, pause and resume scan tasks
- False positive management
- Scheduled scans
- Graphics and statistics generation
- Exports results to plain text, XML, HTML or LateX
- Powerful CLI available
- Fully integrated with Nagios monitoring software
While its web-based interface allows it to be run from any operating system, a CLI is also available and works well for Linux, Unix and Windows operating systems.
The free version can be downloaded from the OpenVAS website, but there is also a commercial enterprise license available from the Greenbone Security (parent company) website.
6. IronWASP
If you’re going to perform ethical hacking, IronWASP is another great tool. It’s free, open source and multi-platform, perfect for those who need to audit their web servers and public applications.
One of the most appealing things about IronWASP is that you don’t need to be an expert to manage its main features. It’s all GUI-based, and full scans can be performed in only a few clicks. So, if you’re just getting started with ethical hacking tools, this is a great way to start.
Some of its main features include:
- Powerful GUI-based interface
- Web scan sequence recording
- Exports results into HTML and RTF file format
- 25+ different web vulnerabilities
- False positive and negative management
- Full Python and Ruby support for its scripting engine
- Can be extended by using modules written in C#, Ruby, and Python
- Supported platforms: Windows, Linux with Wine, and MacOS using CrossOver
7. Nikto
Nikto is another favorite, well-known as part of the Kali Linux Distribution. Other popular Linux distributions such as Fedora already come with Nikto available in their software repositories as well.
This security tool is used to scan web servers and perform different types of tests against the specified remote host. Its clean and simple command line interface makes it really easy to launch any vulnerability testing against your target, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Nikto’s main features include:
- Detects default installation files on any OS
- Detects outdated software applications.
- Runs XSS vulnerability tests
- Launches dictionary-based brute force attacks
- Exports results into plain text, CSV or HTML files
- Intrusion detection system evasion with LibWhisker
- Integration with Metasploit Framework
8. SQLMap
sqlmap is a cool cyber-security tool written in Python that helps security researchers to launch SQL code injection tests against remote hosts. With SQLMap you can detect and test different types of SQL-based vulnerabilities to harden your apps and servers, or to report vulnerabilities to different companies.
Its SQL injection techniques include:
- UNION query-based
- time-based blind
- boolean-based blind
- error-based
- stacked queries
- out-of-band
Main features:
- Multiple database server support: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MSSQL, MS Access, DB2 or Informix.
- Automatic code injection capabilities
- Password hash recognition
- Dictionary-based password cracking
- User enumeration
- Get password hashes
- View user privileges and databases
- Database user privilege escalation
- Dump table information
- Executes remote SQL SELECTS
Check out the next video to see the true power of SQLMap using the sqlmap out-of-band injection working with Metasploit integration against Microsoft SQL Server:
9. SQLNinja
SQLNinja is another SQL vulnerability scanner bundled with Kali Linux distribution. This tool is dedicated to target and exploit web apps that use MS SQL Server as the backend database server. Written in Perl, SQLNinja is available in multiple Unix distros where the Perl interpreter is installed, including:
- Linux
- Mac OS X & iOS
- FreeBSD
SQLninja can be run in different types of modes such as:
- Test mode
- Verbose mode
- Fingerprint remote database mode
- Brute force attack with a word list
- Direct shell & reverse shell
- Scanner for outbound ports
- Reverse ICMP Shell
- DNS tunnelled shell
10. Wapiti
Wapiti is a free open-source command-line based vulnerability scanner written in Python. While it’s not the most popular tool in this field, it does a good job of finding security flaws in many web applications.
Using Wapiti can help you to discover security holes including:
- XSS attacks
- SQL injections
- XPath injections
- XXE injections
- CRLF injections
- Server side request forgery
Other features include:
- Runs in verbose mode
- Ability to pause and resume scans.
- Highlights vulnerabilities found inside the terminal
- Generates reports and export into HTML, XML, JSON and TXT
- Activates and deactivates multiple attack modules
- Removes parameters from certain URLs
- Excludes URLs during an attack
- Bypasses SSL certificate verification
- URL extractor from javascript
- Timeout configuration for large scans
- Sets custom user-agent and HTTP headers
11. Maltego
Maltego is the perfect tool for intel gathering and data reconnaissance while you’re performing the first analysis of your target.
In this case, it can be used to correlate and determine relationships between people, names, phone numbers, email addresses, companies, organizations and social network profiles.
Along with online resources like Whois data, DNS records, social networks, search engines, geolocation services and online API services it can also be used to investigate the correlation between internet-based infrastructures including:
- Domain names
- DNS servers
- Netblocks
- IP addresses
- Files
- Web Pages
Main features include:
- GUI-based interface
- Analyzes up to 10.000 entities per graph
- Extended correlation capabilities
- Data sharing in real time
- Correlated data graphics generator
- Exports graphs to GraphML
- Generates entity lists
- Can copy and paste information
This application is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and the only software requirement is to have Java 1.8 or greater installed.
12. AirCrack-ng
AirCrack-ng is a respected Wifi security suite for home and corporate security investigations. It includes full support for 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK networks and works by capturing network packets. It then analyzes and uses them to crack Wifi access.
For old-school security professionals, AirCrack-ng includes a fancy terminal-based interface along with a few more interesting features.
Main features:
- Extensive documentation (wiki, manpages)
- Active community (forums and IRC channels)
- Support for Linux, Mac and Windows Wifi detection
- Launches PTW, WEP and Fragmentation attacks
- Supports WPA Migration Mode
- Fast cracking speed
- Multiple Wifi card support
- Integration with 3rd party tools
As a bonus, it comes bundled with a lot of Wifi auditing tools including:
- airbase-ng
- aircrack-ng
- airdecap-ng
- airdecloak-ng
- airdriver-ng
- aireplay-ng
- airmon-ng
- airodump-ng
- airolib-ng
- airserv-ng
- airtun-ng
- easside-ng
- packetforge-ng
- tkiptun-ng
- wesside-ng
- airdecloak-ng
13. Reaver
Reaver is a great open-source alternative to Aircrack-ng that allows you to audit the security of any Wifi with WPA/WPA2 pass keys. It uses brute force Wifi attack techniques like Pixie dust attacks to crack Wifi-protected setups through common Wifi flaws and vulnerabilities.
Depending on how well-configured the router-level Wifi security is, it can take between 3 to 10 hours to get an effective brute-force cracking result.
Until recently, the original Reaver version was hosted at Google Cloud. After the release version of version 1.6,a forked community edition was launched in Github.
Build-time dependencies
- build-essential
- libpcap-dev
Runtime-time dependencies
- pixiewps (required for pixiedust attack)
It runs well on most Linux distributions.
14. Ettercap
Ettercap is a network interceptor and packet sniffer for LAN networks. It supports active and passive scans as well as various protocols, including encrypted ones such as SSH and HTTPS.
Other capabilities include network and host analysis (like OS fingerprint), as well as network manipulation over established connections -- which makes this tool great for testing man-in-the-middle attacks.
Main features
- Active and passive protocol analysis
- Filters based on IP source and destination, Mac and ARP addresses
- Data injection into established connections
- SSH and HTTPS encryption-based protocols
- Sniffs remote traffic over GRE tunnel
- Extensible with plugins
- Protocol supports include Telnet, FTP, Imap, Smb, MySQL, LDAP, NFS, SNMP, HTTP, etc.
- Determines OS name and version
- Able to kill established LAN connections
- DNS Hijacking
15. Canvas
Canvas is a great alternative to Metasploit, offering more than 800 exploits for testing remote networks.
Main features
- Remote network exploitation
- Targets different kind of systems
- Targets selected geographic regions
- Takes screenshots of remote systems
- Downloads passwords
- Modifies files inside the system
- Escalates privileges to gain administrator access
This tool also lets you use its platform to write new exploits or use its famous shellcode generator. It also integrates an alternative to nmap called scanrand, which is especially useful for port scanning and host discovery over mid to large networks.
Supported platforms include:
- Linux
- MacOSX (requires PyGTK)
- Windows (requires Python and PyGTK)
Summary
Software companies reap the most benefits from the rise of automated ethical hacking tools and penetration testing utilities, giving them more ways to increase system security every day.
Automated tools are changing the way hacking is evolving, making ethical penetration testing easier, faster and more reliable than ever. Penetration testing and reporting activities now play a crucial role in the process of identifying security flaws in remote or local software — enabling company owners to quickly prevent vulnerabilities from running wild all over the Internet.
Like many of these valuable tools, we’ve developed SecurityTrails from scratch, combining different domain automation lists and tons of forensic data so you can audit your domain names, DNS and online applications.
Are you ready to unveil the true power of our security toolkit? Grab a free API account today or contact us for consultation.
Do you want to access the ultimate OSINT tool?Fill out the form to learn how SurfaceBrowser™ can help you to explore Domains, DNS Servers, IP addresses and much more.Ethical hacking is identifying weaknesses in computer systems or networks to exploit its vulnerabilities so they can be fixed later. Hackers use various techniques to identify threats and thereby increase the security of the device. These people can utilize Linux based operating system to hack PC or network. It contains a wide range of applications to prevent cybersecurity attacks.
Following is a handpicked list of Top OS for Hacking with their popular features and download links.
1) Kali Linux
Kali Linux is a Security Distribution of Linux specifically designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It has over 600 preinstalled penetration-testing applications (cyber-attack performs against computer vulnerability). This OS can be run on Windows as well as Mac OS.
Features:
- It can be used for penetration testing.
- This platform is available in 32 bits as well as 64 bits.
- Kali Linux can be updated without the need to download a new version.
- This OS can encrypt the full disk.
- You can easily automate and customize the Kali Linux installation on the network.
- Support for USB live installs.
- It has a forensics mode that can be used for forensic work.
Link:https://www.kali.org/
2) Parrot OS
Parrot OS is a platform for hacking. It has an easy to use editor for software development. This platform enables you to surf the web privately and securely. Hackers can use Parrot OS to perform vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, computer forensics, and more.
Features:
- It is available as lightweight software that runs with limited resources.
- You can read and change the source code the way you like.
- Provides support of experts to help you in cybersecurity.
- It has distributed infrastructure with dedicated CDNs (Content Distribution Network).
- You can share this operating system with others.
Link:https://parrotlinux.org/
3) BackBox
BackBox is an Ubuntu based open-source Operating System that offers a penetration test and security assessment facility. This system also provides a network analysis toolkit for security in the IT environment. It contains a toolkit that is needed for ethical hacking.
Features:
- It helps you with computer forensic analysis, vulnerability assessment, etc.
- Design with accuracy to avoid redundancies.
- It consumes the minimum resource of your system.
- Provides easy to use the desktop environment.
- Enables you to simulate an attack on application or network.
- It offers stability and speed.
Link:https://www.backbox.org/
4) BlackArch
BlackArch is a free Linux based platform that contains a wide range of tools for automation, mobile, networking, etc. It is an open-source Operating System that is specially created for security researchers and penetration testers. You can install it individually or in a group.
Features:
- It offers live ISO (International Organization for Standardization) with multiple window managers.
- This operating system can be run using limited resources.
- Supports more than one architecture.
- The installer can be built from the source.
Link:https://blackarch.org/
5) Fedora Security Lab
Fedora Security environment enables you to work on security auditing, forensics, and hacking. It comes with a clean and fast desktop environment. This OS contains essential networking tools like Wireshark, Medusa, Sqlninja, Yersinia, and more. Fedora Security environment makes pen-testing and security testing simple.
Features:
- It has a customized menu that offers all the instructions needed to follow the right test path.
- This tool can make Live USB creator (a full operating system that can be booted)
- You can save your test result permanently.
- It creates a live image to make it possible to install software while running.
Link:https://labs.fedoraproject.org/en/security/
6) Dracos Linux
Dracos Linux is an open-source OS that offers penetration testing. It is packed with a wide range of tools, like forensics, information gathering, malware analysis, and more.
Features:
- Everyone can use this platform to study, modify, and redistribute.
- Dracos Linux is a fast OS to perform malware analysis.
- This OS does not collect your sensitive personal data.
- It makes it easy for ethical hackers to perform security research.
Link:https://www.dracos-linux.org/
7) Bugtraq
Bugtraq is an OS that contains a wide range of pen-testing tools, including malware testing tools, mobile forensic tools, etc. It is easy to use services and products. This environment provides friendly service with innovations. Bugtraq helps hackers to monitor the system in real time.
Features:
- The Bugtraq system offers the most comprehensive, optimal.
- It is based on 3.2, and 3.4 kernels
- Anyone can use this platform with ease.
- Install this platform from a USB drive or live DVD.
- Supports numerous languages.
- Available in both 32 bit and 64 bits.
Link:http://www.bugtraq-apps.com/
8) CAINE
CAINE is an Ubuntu-based app that offers a complete forensic environment that provides a graphical interface. This operating system can be integrated into existing software tools as a module. It automatically extracts a timeline from RAM.
Features:
- It is an open-source project.
- CAINE blocks all the devices in read-only mode.
- You can integrate this OS into existing software.
- An environment supports the digital investigator during the digital investigation.
- You can customize features of CAINE.
- It offers a user-friendly operating system.
Link:https://www.caine-live.net/
9) Samurai Web Testing Framework
Samurai Web Testing Framework is a virtual machine that is supported on VMWare (cloud computing software) VirtualBox (virtualization product). This live Linux environment is configured to perform web pen-testing. It contains various tools for attacking websites.
Features:
- It is an open-source project
- Samurai Web Testing Framework focuses on attacking websites.
- It is pre-configured for a web pen-testing environment.
- Features that can be used for focusing on attacking the website.
- It contains tools like WebScarab (web security application testing tool) and ratproxy (Web proxy server) tool.
Link:http://www.samurai-wtf.org/
10) Network Security Toolkit (NST)
Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a Linux-based Live USB/DVD flash drive. It offers free and open-source network and computer security tools that can be used for hacking. This distribution is used by hackers to perform routine security and network traffic monitoring task.
Features:
- You can easily access open-source network security applications.
- It has easy to use WUI (Web User Interface).
- Network Security Toolkit can be used as a network security analysis validation.
- It contains monitoring on a virtual server having virtual machines.
Link:https://www.networksecuritytoolkit.org/nst/index.html
11) DEFT Linux
DEFT Linux or Digital Evidence & Forensics Toolkit Linux OS designed for hacking and computer forensic. This platform can be used on a live system without corrupting devices. It contains tools for incident response and computer forensic. These tools can be used by IT auditors, hackers, investigators, etc.
Features:
- It has a hardware detection facility.
- This environment has open-source applications for investigation.
- It gives two selection of major view packages and all tracked packages.
Link:https://distrowatch.com/
12) DemonLinux
DemonLinux is a Linux distribution that is used for hacking. It has a lightweight desktop environment. This platform comes with a dark theme and a user-friendly user interface. DemonLinux helps you to search or open anything by pressing just one key.
Best Ethical Hacking Os
Features:
- You can instantly search the needed things by pressing the Windows key.
- It has a simple dock design (a bar located at the bottom of the OS).
- Works with Firefox and Google Chrome.
- Easily record desktop or take a screenshot using a quick access menu to save time.
Link:https://demonlinux.com/about.php
13) ArchStrike
ArchStrike is an OS that can be used for security professionals and researchers. It follows Arch Linux OS standards to maintain packages properly. This environment can be used for pen testing and security layer. You can easily install or remove it without any problem.
Features:
- It gives two selection of major view packages and all tracked packages.
- This environment includes open source applications for investigation.
- It has a hardware detection facility.
Windows 10 Hacking Os
Link:https://archstrike.org/