What is Kali Linux used for?

Kali Linux is very much targeted at penetration testers, who need a flexible tool to test their penetration testing processes. This is an old, but increasingly relevant, question, especially in a post-Heartbleed world where there is more awareness about the vulnerabilities in software and hardware products. The sad truth is that only a small percentage of them will be security experts and/or ethical hackers. Therefore, it’s critical to test these products. Kali Linux can help with this, but only when used in a targeted way.

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The Kali linux distribution is said to be a highly configurable and useful tool for penetration testers, but only if you understand the way it’s used. It is indeed a great security tool for beginners, or security professionals who are well versed in the usual ways of using tools for security testing. However, the people I am talking to are for example, hackers who are looking to test the security of IoT products for example, which have a different structure and different policies. The way Kali works, makes it hard to adopt to this type of environment and the way people like to test things.

The many versions of Kali Linux

When it comes to version numbers, things become a bit tricky. There is no fixed release schedule for Kali Linux. The latest version is Kali Linux 2017.1. Even if you do choose to go on a specific version, you will only get so far if you only know the features of the latest version. In order to make the most out of your time and your testing process, you need to check out other versions of Kali Linux. For example, in this blog post, I will show you two versions of Kali that have been used in my organization: Kali Linux 2017.2 and Kali Linux 2017.3. I will then show you how you can install them in Kali Linux 2017.1.

Kali 2017.1 -> 2017.2

In my case, I use Kali Linux on my Dell PowerEdge server that runs Oracle VirtualBox. Kali Linux is a feature rich Linux distribution, but one of its missing feature is virtualization. The good news is that you can use Kali Linux on your virtual machine and even a cloud platform like Digital Ocean. The fact that Kali Linux supports VMware and KVM is not a feature, but a prerequisite for successfully doing the installation. In order to accomplish the virtualization of Kali, you need to install a graphical virtualization software. This is easier than you think, but a bit time consuming. There are also several well known programs, but VMWare Player is the first I want to show you. I recommend the standalone installation option of Kali Linux (that I’ll show you in the next blog post), but this does require you to install VirtualBox. The standalone install process is more efficient and easier if you’re working with a virtualized environment.

What is Kali Linux used for?

1) Install VirtualBox

Kali Linux 2017.2, 2017.3 or 2016.x distributions should work with VirtualBox with no problems. I used VirtualBox 4.3.1.

If you are working on Windows, VMWare Player (Kali) will also work with no problems. If you are not sure, you can try VMWare Workstation or VMware Fusion. Just make sure to ensure that the version of Kali you download is at least version 2017.1 (or higher).

2) Install the Kali Linux distribution

In order to install Kali Linux in a VirtualBox or VirtualBox on the Oracle Cloud platform, you first need to add the additional VirtualBox guest user account. You can add the VirtualBox Guest User account using the command:

Guest add –s VirtualBox guest user –o default –g /dev/vg_osf –g /run/vmfs/volumes/kali/kali.root –g /dev/vg_osf/volumes/kali/kali_security_project –g /run/vmfs/volumes/kali/kali_tutorials –g /run/vmfs/volumes/kali/kali_tutorials

I decided to create the virtual machine using VirtualBox 5.x, but it doesn’t really matter, the same installation will work for other versions.

If you didn’t set up the virtual machine and you have an older version of VirtualBox, I will not guide you through the virtualization process, but I suggest you use a different virtualization software like VMWare Player.

What is Kali Linux used for?