Kali Linux

Revealed
 
Mastering the Penetration Testing
Distribution
 Kali Linux
Revealed
 
Mastering the Penetration Testing
Distribution

by Raphaël Hertzog, Jim

O’Gorman, and Mati Aharoni
Kali Linux Revealed

Copyright © 2017 Raphaël Hertzog, Jim O’Gorman, and Mati Aharoni

This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
➨ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Some sections of this book borrow content from the “Debian Administrator’s Handbook, Debian Jessie from
Discovery to Mastery” written by Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas, which is available here:
➨ https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/
For the purpose of the CC-BY-SA license, Kali Linux Revealed is an Adaptation of the Debian Administrator’s
Handbook.
“Kali Linux” is a trademark of Offensive Security. Any use or distribution of this book, modified or not, must
comply with the trademark policy defined here:
➨ https://www.kali.org/trademark-policy/
All Rights Not Explicitly Granted Above Are Reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9976156-0-9 (paperback)

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www.offensive-security.com

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 Table of Contents

1. About Kali Linux 1

1.1 A Bit of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Relationship with Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.1 The Flow of Packages ......... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.2 Managing the Difference with Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Purpose and Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Main Kali Linux Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.1 A Live System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.2 Forensics Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.3 A Custom Linux Kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.4 Completely Customizable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.5 A Trustable Operating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.6 Usable on a Wide Range of ARM Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 Kali Linux Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5.1 Single Root User by Default ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.5.2 Network Services Disabled by Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.5.3 A Curated Collection of Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Getting Started with Kali Linux 13
2.1 Downloading a Kali ISO Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.1 Where to Download ............ ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.2 What to Download ............. ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.3 Verifying Integrity and Authenticity . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Relying on the TLS-Protected Website . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Relying on PGP’s Web of Trust . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.4 Copying the Image on a DVD-ROM or USB Key .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on Linux . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on OS X/macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 Booting a Kali ISO Image in Live Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.1 On a Real Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.2 In a Virtual Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
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