Top 10 Ethical Hacking Tools

In this blog, I’ll be guiding and briefly explaining the top 10 tools used by hackers.

Hackers do not prefer any Windows-based system for hacking, they prefer Debian-based
Linux system, which is developed for penetration testing and digital forensics, specifically Kali Linux.

Kali Linux

Kali Linux is a Debian-based operating system that is maintained by Offensive Security.
It was developed by Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns.

It is a specially built operating system for network analysis, penetration testing,
and other people who work in the field of cyber security and analysis.

Interestingly Kali Linux became famous after it appeared in Mr. Robot series.

Kali Linux is not intended for public usage rather, while it is intended for professionals and individuals who are familiar with Linux.

Top 10 tools on Kali Linux

There are several tools available, both manual and automatic, which can be
used for penetration testing and analysis.

But testing systems manually will take several hours.
So to save time, we use tools that come preinstalled with Kali Linux, and by using these tools,

We not only save time, but we also capture reliable and precise results.

There are more than 500 tools that are included in Kali Linux, which can
be used for hacking and penetration testing, from which I’ve sorted out the top 10 tools,
which are as follows:

Burp Suite
Nmap
Metasploit
Wireshark
Aircrack NG
Netcat
Hydra
Jhon The Ripper
SQL map
Social Engineering Toolkit

Burp Suite

Burp Suite is one of the most widely used web application security testing tools.

This tool is used as a proxy, which means all requests from the proxy’s browser will pass through it.

Because the requests run through the Burp Suite, we can make changes to the requests as we require.

And this feature makes this tool useful—useful for testing vulnerabilities such as XSS, SQLI, and other web-related issues.

Burp Suite’s community edition is free and comes preinstalled with Kali Linux, but there is a premium version called Burp Suite Professional that has many more features than the free version.

How to use Burp Suite?

In order to use Burp Suite, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Burp Suite”: burpsuite

Nmap

Nmap, also known as Network Mapper, is a very simple and open-source scanning tool in Kali Linux.

This tool works by sending packets and analyzing responses to uncover the host and services running on a computer network.

This tool allows us to scan a system or a network; it first sends packets to the host’s computer and then analyses the response to create the desired result. It allows us to scan all open ports, Host Discovery, NetBIOS, and even OS detection.

The Nmap tool is one of the best and most widely used tools for scanning and penetration testing.

How to use NMAP?

In order to use NMAP, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “NMAP”: nmap <target ip address>

Also, learn how to use Nmap to detect vulnerabilities on any network.

Click here to access 👉 NMAP – To Find Network Vulnerabilities

Metasploit

Metasploit is an open-source tool and is one of the most widely used tools for penetration testing globally. It is primarily a command-line tool, but it also includes a GUI package
known as “Armitage,” which makes using Metasploit more convenient and feasible.

This tool contains a large number of exploits for exploiting network or operating system vulnerabilities.

It is often used on local networks, but we can also use it for hosts over
the internet by using port forwarding.

How to use Metasploit?

In order to use Metasploit, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Metasploit”: msfconsole

Wireshark

Wireshark is a very famous tool among other Kali Linux tools. It is commonly defined as a “network sniffer,” by which I mean that it captures and analyses packets.

This tool is used for network analysis, which is commonly used for network security. It is able to analyze the data sent over a network in the form of packets.

Each and every packet has detailed information, which includes the source
and destination IP addresses, transmit timings, type of protocol used, and header data.

These files have an extension of “pcapp.”

And these “pcapp” files can only be analysed by Wireshark.

How to use Wireshark?

In order to run and use Wireshark, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Wireshark”: wireshark
4: Download a demo “pcapp” file.
5: Then press “Ctrl + 0″, to open a “pcapp” file in wireshark.

Then you will find a list of packets and their details, which you will further analyze.

Aircrack NG

Aircrack NG is an all-in-one packet sniffer.

WEP cracker, WPA cracker, analysis tool, and hash capturing tool

This tool is most commonly used to hack wifi; we can use it to capture packages and
read hashes from them, as well as crack those hashes using various attacks such as dictionary attacks.

It supports almost all modern wireless interfaces.

How to use Aircrack NG?

In order to use SQLmap, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Aircrack NG”: aircrack-ng

Netcat

Netcat, also known as NC, is a networking tool that can do port scanning, listening, and redirection.

It is a backend tool that helps as a backdoor into other networked systems,
which means you can send and receive files through netcat.

This tool uses TCP or UDP ports for reading and writing to a network connection.

Netcat is also called the “pocket knife of networking tools.”

How to use Netcat?

In order to use Netcat, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Netcat”: sudo nc or sudo netcat

Hydra

This is a quite interesting tool. This tool helps an individual crack login pages on websites.
It also comes pre-installed in Kali Linux.

However, “Hydra” is no longer actively maintained; you can find it on GitHub.

How to use Hydra?

In order to use Hydra, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “Hydra”: sudo hydra

John The Ripper

John The Ripper is an open-source tool used for password cracking.

It is commonly used during penetration testing to help the team
spot weak passwords and identify poor password policies in the system.

JTR (John The Ripper) is not only available for Linux but also for various other operating systems.

It also has its own word lists of the maximum possible passwords available for more than 20 languages.

Wordlists provide a huge number of possible passwords from which it can create the
hash values to guess the target password.

Since it has become a trend to use the same password on most sites,
this is extremely successful and easy to crack if it is present in the wordlist.

This tool encrypts the data first, then checks if the hash values match;
if they do, you have the password; if not, it will continue to check.

How to use John The Ripper?

In order to use John The Ripper, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “John The Ripper”: sudo john

SQL map

SQL Map is an open source tool used in penetration testing to detect and exploit the “SQL Injection” flaw. It automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL Injection.

These attacks can take control of the database that uses SQL, and they can affect any web application or web site that has a SQL database linked.

SQL databases include mySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and many others, and they contain sensitive information that, if leaked, will affect many people.So to find and defend against these vulnerabilities, SQLMap helps.

How to use SQLmap?

In order to use SQLmap, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up Kali Linux machine.
2: Open terminal.
3: Type the following to run “SQLmap”: sudo sqlmap

The SET, or Social Engineering Toolkit, is an open source penetration testing framework designed for social engineering.

It has a collection of tools that can be used to perform social engineering attacks.

These tools gather information by exploiting and manipulating human nature.

It is also one of the best tools for performing phishing attacks.

How to use Social engineering toolkit?

In order to use SET, follow the steps below:

1: Boot-up your Kali Linux machine, SET comes pre-installed in it.
2: Open terminal
3: Type the following sudo setoolkit

Then you are good to go; it will give you a set of options that you can use to perform your attacks.

If you want to become a cybersecurity expert, you must have detailed knowledge of Kali Linux and its tools.
Learning about the tools will make you an expert, whether it’s for information gathering, penetration testing, phishing, or anything else.

This is only a partial list of the tools required to become a cybersecurity expert.Also, I’ve shown how you can run those tools, but if you want to know about any tools in detail, comment below and I’ll make a blog and describe the tool separately there.

I hope you found this blog useful, and that you learned about tools you were previously unaware of. If you liked this blog and gained some knowledge, or even if you have some doubts regarding any tools, make sure to comment, and we will reach out to you.

-VirusZzWarning

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