The release of the distribution kit Kali Linux 2023.2, based on the Debian package base and designed for testing systems for vulnerabilities, auditing, analyzing residual information and identifying the consequences of intruder attacks, has been presented. All original developments created within the distribution are distributed under the GPL license and are available through a public Git repository. Several variants of iso images have been prepared for download, 443 MB, 2.8 GB and 3.7 GB in size. Builds are available for i386, x86_64, ARM architectures (armhf and armel, Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, ARM Chromebook, Odroid). The Xfce desktop is offered by default, but KDE, GNOME, MATE, LXDE, and Enlightenment e17 are optionally supported.
Kali includes one of the most comprehensive collections of tools for computer security professionals, from web application testing and wireless network penetration testing to RFID reader. The kit includes a collection of exploits and over 300 specialized security tools such as Aircrack, Maltego, SAINT, Kismet, Bluebugger, Btcrack, Btscanner, Nmap, p0f. In addition, the distribution kit includes tools for accelerating password guessing (Multihash CUDA Brute Forcer) and WPA keys (Pyrit) through the use of CUDA and AMD Stream technologies, which allow using GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD video cards to perform computational operations.
In the new release:
- A separate virtual machine image for the Hyper-V hypervisor has been prepared, preconfigured to use ESM mode (Enhanced Session Mode, xRDP over HvSocket) and able to work immediately without additional settings.
- The default Xfce desktop build has migrated from the PulseAudio sound server to the PipeWire media server (the GNOME build was migrated to PipeWire earlier).
- The GtkHash extension is preinstalled in the base assembly with Xfce in the file manager, which allows you to quickly calculate checksums in the dialog with file properties.
- The GNOME-based environment has been updated to release 44, which continues to transition applications to use GTK 4 and the libadwaita library (GNOME Shell user shell and Mutter compositing manager, among other things, have been translated to GTK4). The mode of displaying content in the form of a grid of icons has been added to the file selection dialog. Numerous changes have been made to the configurator. Added a section for Bluetooth control to the quick change settings menu.
- Added the Tiling Assistant extension to the GNOME-based variant for tiling windows.
- The version with the desktop was completely redesigned based on the i3 tiled window manager (kali-desktop-i3 meta-package), which acquired the appearance of a full-fledged user environment.
- Icons have been updated and the application menu has been restructured.
- New utilities included:
- Cilium-cli - Kubernetes cluster management.
- Cosign - generating digital signatures for containers.
- Eksctl is the command line interface for Amazon EKS.
- Evilginx is a MITM attack framework for capturing credentials, session cookies, and bypassing two-factor authentication.
- GoPhish is a phishing toolkit.
- Humble is an HTTP header parser.
- Slim is a container image packer.
- Syft is an SBoM (Firmware Software Bill of Materials) generator that determines the composition of software components included in a container image or present in a file system.
- Terraform is an infrastructure management platform.
- Tetragon is an eBPF based analyzer.
- TheHive is an intrusion response platform.
- Trivy is a toolkit for finding vulnerabilities and configuration issues in containers, repositories and cloud environments.
- Wsgidav is a WebDAV server that uses WSGI.
- Updated environment for mobile devices based on the Android platform - NetHunter, with a selection of tools for testing systems for vulnerabilities. Using NetHunter, it is possible to check the implementation of attacks specific to mobile devices, for example, through emulation of the operation of USB devices (BadUSB and HID Keyboard - emulation of a USB network adapter that can be used for MITM attacks, or a USB keyboard that performs character substitution) and the creation of fake access points (MANA Evil Access Point). NetHunter is installed into the stock Android platform environment in the form of a chroot image that runs a specially adapted version of Kali Linux.
Source: opennet.ru