Kali Linux - The Ultimate Penetration Testing Course

Welcome to Kali Linux Training. Kali Linux, previously known as Backtrack was founded in 2006. It became famous with Backtrack 5, the most popular pentesting live CD. Later, it was relaunched with Kali Linux 1.0, and now officially as Kali Linux 2.0 Sana in 2015 with even GNOME 3 user interface. Kali Linux is developed and maintained by Offensive security pvt.Ltd.

• Kali Linux is one of the most leading distros in the world of Penetration testing. Penetration testing or Pentesting or more often Known as Ethical Hacking (much wider term than Pentesting however) is a test done in a practical environment to test the reliability and security of systems in non-ordinary situations. Kali Linux, previously known as Backtrack is based on Debian which is extremely famous for its Security and stability. There are lots of other operating systems like the Arch Linux in which you can build everything from source, or other ready-made operating systems like the parrot OS, Black Arch or even the BackBox. But the reason I prefer Kali Linux is because it is extremely portable, highly secure and is specifically hand-made for the sole purpose of attacking and penetrating other operating systems.
• Kali Linux is not only available on Desktops and laptops, but is also available to other hardware devices like the Trim Slice, Raspberry Pi, USB Armory and even ARM based Chrome books. Besides these, they are run in ch-root environment on cell phone devices like the OnePlus One, Nexus series(from 4 till 9). And similar to Arch Linux, Kali also provides extreme OS customization and even building it from source. Kali Linux for Cell Phone devices are known as Net-Hunter. Kali Linux has an open source community to pro-actively support ARM devices. It has a LUKS Nuke Encryption built-in feature which makes every bit of the hard disk, including the metadata, the unnecessary spaces, blocks and clusters between data, hidden files and every other portion of data encrypted to the extreme stage.  has custom downloadable ISO image files as per user needs like the Kali Linux 64 and 32 bit, light and mini version which are small image files as small as upto 28 Megabytes of data, and also images for armel and armhf versions. It has a totally separate website for other hardware like the Nethunter. org for the ARM based devices. They have separate Vmware and Virtual Box optimized images for installing them into the virtual chroot environment.

Kali Linux Training also has an extreme Secure and brilliantly optimized version of USB Boot known as the Forensics live boot. Similar to any other Linux live cd, Kali can also be booted with a pendrive as small as upto 8 gigs and it leaves no trace of information or meta-data in the RAM or swap. It is the most versatile type of Operating system ever built in a decade atleast. Kali Linux has more than 400  tools built-in; some specifically optimized and hand-made for Kali such as the Maltego Chlorine, BeEF (Browser Exploitation Framework), John the Ripper password cracker, OCL-hashcat, Setoolkit (Social Engineering Framework), Armitage and the Metasploit Framework (separate from the ones developed by Rapid7). Each of these hacking kits are kept updated on a continuous basis with the help of Regular and Bleeding Edge Repositories.

Objectives of Kali Linux Training

• The Primary objective of the Kali Linux Training is to make you aware of the hazards of malicious activities perforated by the Black-hat hackers.
• This Kali Linux Training will give you in-depth knowledge about how actual hacking is done, and how to   test an environment and its reliability which people term as highly secure.
• However, this Kali Linux Training is not foolproof and will have its own course of action, where you may need to go out of the way to achieve a few things like breaking into or D’DOSing(Distributed Denial of Service Attacks)your own infrastructure to test its robustness and it may damage your hardware.
• These Kali Linux Training is intended to make you a successful penetration tester but not overnight.
• You may need to repeat things a bit, change some pieces of code here and there to make sure they work, or even change a whole code since the chances of me exploiting zero day vulnerabilities are extremely less here.
• Depending upon the updates of the Kali source repositories, some applications may not be available in the default Kali Linux package since they get deprecated and discarded if they are of no use.
• You may need to install an older version of the package or install the application by adding its repository but it would be at your own risk, since these packages if discarded are not updated by Kali Linux builders and developers and may have their own vulnerabilities.

Top Tools in Kali Linux Training:

• Setoolkit

Setoolkit or what it is popularly known as Social Engineering toolkit is a compiled command line interface developed by David Kennedy. David Kennedy has been one of the most influential hackers of all time. Setoolkit contains a lots of tools such as Phishing attacks, writing RAT (Remote Administration Tool), developing fake certificates for Java Applet attack, Mass mailing, Spear phishing attacks, Website cloning and many more. Tools in Setoolkit are mostly those which would require Human Vulnerabilities in the network such as asking a person to login to a totally fake website which looks exactly like the original. For example faking Microsoft. com to Microsoff. com or even Micr0soft. com. People most ignore these things and fall to these tactics of the hackers. Setoolkit is used to analyze such vulnerabilities and try to patch them. One cannot patch human tendency to trust, but however most of these sites can be blocked in a corporate environment by using softwares like Cyberroam and other similar stuff.

• Android Malware App

Metasploit contains lots of malwares including the ones for android. By creating a Trojan, one just needs to send the app via social engineering in the target victim’s android cell phone which would create a main activity in the background and return a reverse tcp connection to the handler running on the attackers machine. With the access to the android system, the attacker can enable Adb debugging over network and disable the debug notification. With adb networking enabled, the attacker can search for a network to connect to when the victim is connected and get access to the root directory. All of these can just be done in a few minutes without even the victim knowing that these things are happening.

• Aircrack-ng

Aircrack-ng is a tool used with Nmap for network analysis. Aircrack itself contains tools for network hijacking, password cracking, Ddosing networks and many more. These are all command line tools and can be executed by just typing it in the terminal such as ‘airodump-ng wlan0′ or ‘aireplay-ng<options><flag>’. Aircrack-ng is mostly used to monitor the connections to a network, more importantly wireless networks. But more oftenlyaircrack nowadays is used to crack Wi-Fi passwords and destroying victim’s network infrastructure. There is also another tool known as wifite which is automated to crack passwords but is not as powerful as Aircrack in terms of Passhash cracking.

• John the Ripper

John the Ripper is a password cracking tool. It can be used online as well as offline. It is a built-in command line tool in Kali Linux. It is an old and very famous tool used for passhash cracking and it runs on multi environment such as linux, debian, Windows and even Mac. The official website is openwall. com/john/ .But however a person using Kali Linux wont need it, since JTR is continuously updated in the Kali repositories. John The Ripper offers Brute force attacks which is mostly common in password cracking.

• Developing Trojans and Backdoors for Windows using Metasploit

Trojans can easily be developed in Metasploit. As I said previously in the case of Android Malwares, Metasploit develops almost more than 600 exploits which can be used for multiple purposes. Kali comes with Veil framework which is built in, which can encode the Trojans to even avoid antivirus and firewalls.

Who Should Learn This Kali Linux Training?

• There is no specific pre-requisite to learning this course.
• Over time, I have seen even a 10°-grade child to be working on Kali Linux and developing his own exploits and root-kits.
• However one must know how to work around systems and must be wise enough to understand the difference between a problem and a work-around problem.
• Knowing to operate on a virtual machine would prove fruitful, whereas having altogether 2 systems would prove wiser otherwise.

NetHunter from Kali Linux

• Nethunter is a ch-root based Kali Linux environment developed especially for ARM Devices, more importantly the Nexus 5/6 and the Oneplus One.
• It may run in other devices as well, however the kernel is specifically developed for the above devices since they have a good amount of memory and internal space to deal with the ch-root environment.
• Nethunter is specifically crafted for Cell phones the reason being it has numerous portable attacks like the HID Keyboard Attack, HID Ducky Scripts, BadUSB MITM Attacks and the Mana Evil Access Points.
• Some of these attacks can also be done using a laptop, however using a Cell Phone is altogether more stealthy.
• The official website to download the NetHunter ISO image is  nethunter. com/. The latest version as of now is Nethunter 3.0 for CM12.1 and Marshmallow devices.

Advantages of this Kali Linux Training:

Speaking conclusively, this Kali Linux Training can be learn by any person who wants to secure his surrounding from malicious black hat hackers. We face everyday threats like when we login to Public Wi-Fi in a McDonalds or Starbucks nearby. Knowing how to work with Kali Linux will prove efficient to securing your network from people trying to sniff out packets, cookies and even attacks like DNS cache poisoning, ARP poisoning and other MITM attacks. This Kali Linux Training covers the following topics which are not only useful for a person using regular computer on a daily basis, but also to a professional security engineer or Ethical Hacker and even just a Desktop and Network Administrator:

1. Tracking DNS and other IP address and network information using tools like Nmap, Dnsmap, Dnsenum and other similar tools.
2. Preventing Website Account hacks through learning Social Engineering Toolkit provided as is in the Kali Linux package. Social Engineering Toolkit contains Spear Phishing attacks, Java Applet based attacks, creating fake websites and Mass mailing.
3. Developing Malwares for Android devices which support Android 2.3 gingerbread to Android 5.0 lollipop. These malwares can be remotely controlled via any Kali Linux based laptop or Android Net-Hunter device through the Metasploit handler tools.
4. Developing Malwares, Trojans and Persistent backdoors an tunneling them to our handlers via the Rapid7 Metasploit and Armitage package.
5. Learning the Methods of DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service Attacks). Learning how DDOS occurs can help you identify the weakness in the network infrastructure. DDOSing can not only be done on just Website servers, but also on LAN and Wi-fi based networks.

These tools help you not only to protect your surrounding environment and infrastructure, but also to track down malicious networks and disable them which try to penetrate your network. This course can help you test the security of your network and enhance them and make them robust. When BlackHats attack, there is no guarantee that you are 100% secure. There are always potholes in the system; be it either Social Hijacking or Bad network implementation. Kali Linux helps to build a stronger environment, which not only helps to strengthen the organization but also with its forensics tools, one can even trace the almost exact reason and the source of the hack! Kali Linux can be used in large corporate companies, Internet Service providers and even your own home networks. Kali Linux is the preferred choice of BlackHat, Grey Hat and the White hat Hackers as well.

Real World Applications of Kali Linux Training:

• Kali Linux Training has abundance of tools loaded in it. It is one of the most stable distros in all times and since it is debian, it is one of the most secure systems one can even encounter. One look at Kali Linux and you will know it is made what it exactly looks like: “Hacking and Penetration Testing”. Besides the latest versions of Kali Linux are based on Gnome3 which provide an extremely stable desktop and fast experience. Kali Linux comes will approximately 400 tools in-built which are all updated continuously. Beside these, there are also lots of other repositories where one can find other tools as well. But being already so vast in nature, one may not find the need to install any extra tools. Kali Linux comes pre-built with ssh and VNC, so once it is installed in a flash drive, it is easier for any Network Administrator to just plug and play it. All of these things make Kali Linux the perfect suitable choice for ethical, as well as a non-ethical hacker.
• Real World usage of kali Linux are very wide. Over time, I have seen people using Kali Linux on a flash drive, just as a forensics tool to recover deleted and formatted data. Kali Linux custom distros are used in a lot of Security and Anti-virus firms to test the vulnerabilities of their developed apps, especially antiviruses. Did you know that almost 90% of your data if not all can be recovered even though you have deleted and formatted your hard drive, flash drive or your cell Phone. Let alone the fact, that a lot of information can be recovered from the RAM as well. Recently, the famous Antivirus Company Avast used a lot of different tools to try and recover data from formatted and used cell phones sold on ebay. All of the tools are actually available in Kali Linux under one roof. This is not only time-saving for large companies, but also resource-saving as well.
• Kali Linux Training is a totally open-source, though it is trademarked, it is still totally free to use for commercial purpose as well. This makes Kali Linux Training suitable for companies needing to test their daily routine basis. Banks, Trusts and other financial organizations need to keep their websites, servers and networks secure from hackers. Sometimes, hiring an outside source to test the network security is not suitable due to the amount of confidentiality and trust required. At this point of time, companies often tend to prefer hiring a full time Network Security Engineer having a vast amount of experience in pentesting and with a good range of tools. Learning Kali Linux Training will not prevent any attacks, since there is always a chance of Zero-day vulnerabilities. However it can reduce the effort required to tackle these attacks and less costly counter measures. The best example can be taken from the latest Protonmail attacks. Protonmail is one of the largest Encrypted email services. Their infrastructure was extremely DDOSed and their website was out for a couple of days. These kinds of attacks require more of pre-installed security rather than counter measures. This is the main reason why Network Security Engineers use kali linux, since during these types of attacks, one doesn’t have the time to find a stable Linux distro, install necessary apps and make sure one doesn’t fall into a honeypot.