Pentesters' fave Kali Linux turns 10 with version 23.1
- Reference: 1678872607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/15/kali_linux_turns_10/
- Source link:
The new version, release [1]2023.1 , appears exactly one decade after version [2]1.0 was released on March 13th 2013. Kali Linux is a rebuild of an [3]earlier distro called BackTrack , first rolled out 17 years ago, which was based on WHAX, [4]first out 18 years back, which is in turn based on Whoppix. Suffice to say, it goes back a long while.
The default Xfce desktop of Kali Linux 2023.1 is neatly customised, albeit a little shinier than more business-focused distros
Kali rates highly on Distrowatch – it's currently at number 18, pop-pickers – which we ascribe mainly to its appearances on [5]TV show Mr Robot and the consequent perception that this is a [6]cool tool for élite
hackers penetration testers and other security professionals .
For the type of people it [7]targets , it's a handy time-saver. It has a bewildering variety of [8]tools , and when installing, you can choose whether you want them all built in, or just a core set. Frankly, the Reg FOSS desk is not an élite hacker and has never worked as a pen-tester – although he has warned some large companies about [9]holes in their network security before now.
[10]After nearly two decades of waiting, GNOME 44 brings you... image thumbnails
[11]The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop
[12]openSUSE finds an elegant solution to x86-64 version support
[13]A new version of APT is coming to Debian 12
As such, this vulture is lamentably lacking in competence to judge Kali for the purposes for which it's intended. As a desktop distro, though, it looks pretty good. By default, you get the niftiest configuration of Xfce that we've seen [14]since we looked at Zinc last year , complete with an immaculately catalogued app menu. It looks good and it works well. It has handy options such as configuring a separate /home partition in the installer, and when we installed it in VirtualBox, it automatically configured the graphics driver, so the desktop resized along with the window and so on. Even if you're just a hacker-wannabe, you could do a lot worse, and other distros could learn from the attention to detail here.
The app-launcher menu is carefully sorted and categorized to help you find your way through the many dozens of bundled tools. We especially like the numbering
Similarly to [15]the Debian-based siduction , it's a rolling-release distro. We got the latest kernel 6.1 and Xfce 4.18.1. But saying that, these days, Kali Linux is not so much a distro as a family of them. As well as the default Xfce version, there are also KDE (5.27) and GNOME (43) editions. Work is underway on a new, defensive- rather than offensive-security focused edition called [16]Kali Purple which describes itself as a SOC in a box – as in, a [17]Security Operations Center rather than a system-on-a-chip (SoC).
There is an almost bewildering variety of different editions of Kali. You can install it locally, with versions for both x86-32 and x86-64 PCs, plus Apple Silicon Macs. Alongside those, there are versions for the Raspberry Pi 1, the Pi 2 through 4, the Pi Zero W, and Pi Zero 2 W, plus the [18]Newport and [19]Ventana USB-key-sized SBCs from Gateworks, and the [20]USBArmory mk II SBC from [21]F-Secure spin-off WithSecure .
There's also an edition of Kali for the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, plus there's a special version called [22]NetHunter with editions for a range of Android phones. Alongside all these, there are separate VM images customized for VirtualBox, VMware, and QEMU, plus cloud editions, container editions, and a version that runs on Windows Services for Linux. The Kali development [23]team hasn't forgotten its various roots in multiple live-CD distros, and there are also live editions that run direct from USB on x86-32, x86-64 and M1 Macs without installation.
[24]
There are more variants of Kali than arms on the Hindu Goddess of Death after whom it is named, and it is just as fearsomely capable as she. We may not have felt that way when we first approached Kali, but we backed away with considerable respect. ®
Get our [25]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.kali.org/blog/kali-linux-2023-1-release/
[2] https://www.kali.org/releases/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2012/04/12/backtrack_linux_0day/
[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/144764/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2017/03/28/verity_stob_mr_robot/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/14/silly_police_infosec_parental_advice_poster/
[7] https://www.kali.org/features/
[8] https://www.kali.org/tools/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2009/03/19/sumitomo_cyberheist_investigation/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/gnome_44_release_candidate/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/10/thinkpad_x1c_g10_linux/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/09/opensuse_finds_x86_64_solution/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/08/debian_12_apt_2_6/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/zinc_ubuntu_remix/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/05/siduction_2022_1/
[16] https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/kali-purple/documentation
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/paper/view/6619/frost-and-sullivan-practitioners-guide-to-building-a-security-operations-center
[18] https://www.gateworks.com/products/industrial-single-board-computers/octeon-tx-single-board-computers-gateworks-newport/
[19] https://www.gateworks.com/products/industrial-single-board-computers/imx6-single-board-computer-gateworks-ventana-family/
[20] https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-hardware/usb-armory
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/fsecure_withsecure/
[22] https://www.kali.org/docs/nethunter/
[23] https://www.kali.org/about-us/
[24] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZBGlTv0wm5S66QguS7KBMwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[25] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Free as in Beer
... for Kali's use cases, one should compile everything from scratch ...
Indeed ...
I would not use it as a my desktop distribution unless I was able to do that, which I am not.
Much more so taking into account that it is a systemd enhanced distribution.
Which begs the question for Liam: why are systemd-less distributions all but absent from your reviews?
Best,
.
Backtrack
Been using it on and off since the Backtrack days. I'm not an expert, not even an amateur, I just fiddle now and then. I remember back in 2008 I was interested in it for WIFI sniffing and pointed out to the NHS trust I was working at, to the 3rd line engineers "Why are we using WEP still on the corporate WIFI. Its really easy to crack the password? There are flats over the road, I wonder how many of them are using it in the evenings". The reply was "But we're using 128bit WEP, its fine". I gave up reporting issues, being the temp engineer I was frequently ignored. Much like pointing out the flaw in Safeboot where I kept a laptop back that had me logged in just fine, past Safeboot. If I ever ran into a laptop that locked my Safeboot account, I'd boot up the spare which would unlock my account, instead of waiting ages for them to unlock me (as we weren't given permissions to do it ourselves but could be trusted to install machines in hospitals and GP surgeries. The reason I can't stand the IT culture in the NHS). Reported this, was told "Its fine the way it is". When I eventually left an engineer who stayed said "They finally admitted you were right with the Safeboot setup. They'd incorrectly set it so the laptop won over the server, they've now switched it, closing the flaw you pointed out".
Free as in Beer
Kali has always been an excellent distro.
Runs on almost anything; does exactly what it says on the tin.
I know some people would demand that for Kali's use cases, one should compile everything from scratch on hardware you have built yourself without PRC/NSA hardware/firmware backdoors, from personally vetted source code, but, as a commodity distro, for those use cases, there is probably none better.
Lots of other software/distros should take a look and learn from the best (I agree that's arguable, but in terms of swept-up-ness and setup, at least, its a hill on which I am willing to if not die on then sit quietly on, listening...)
Beer because Kali deserves one on it's 10th/17th/18th birthday.
p.s. first I used was 0.9(ish) and have kept a 'weather eye' on it ever since.