1. Download Kali Linux 64 Bit

Linux distributions designed for security analysis, penetration testing, and forensic analysis are all the rage these days. It seems like you can hardly swing a dead cat (or a dead computer) without hitting one.

Description: Kali Linux (formerly known as BackTrack) is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. It features timely security updates, support for the ARM architecture, a choice of four popular desktop environments, and seamless upgrades to newer versions. Kali Linux has a dedicated project set aside for compatibility and porting to specific Android devices, called Kali Linux NetHunter. It is the first Open Source Android penetration testing platform for Nexus devices, created as a joint effort between the Kali community member 'BinkyBear' and Offensive Security. How To Install Kali Linux. By sandy Posted on November 11, 2018 When it comes to penetration testing, hacking and offensive distros, one of the first to be mentioned is Kali Linux. It is based on Debian and is available in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. You have options for the Gnome (default and light), KDE, Mate, Xfce, LXDE, armhf, armel.

As a dedicated Linux user I consider that to be a good thing, simply because choice is always good, and it is always good to have several groups of talented and dedicated people working on something. But as a long-time user of Kali Linux (and BackTrack before that) I honestly believe that Kali is still the best in the field, so I am always pleased when I hear there is a new Kali release.

The new release, 2017.3, is primarily a roll-up, incorporating all patches and updates issued since the last release into a clean set of installation images. Remember, though, Kali is a rolling-release distribution, so if you already have it installed you don't need to reinstall from these new images; just make sure that you have the latest updates installed.

If you do want or need to make a fresh installation, the distribution images for the PC version (32 and 64 bit) can be obtained from the Kali downloads page. There are a number of different versions there, and people sometimes get confused by them, so here is a quick summary:

• Kali 64 bit / Kali 32 bit -- These are the full versions, which include all of the tools and have a Gnome 3 desktop.
• Kali 64 bit Light / Kali 32 bit Light -- These versions have been trimmed down to reduce the download size. They do not include the tools, and they have an Xfce desktop.
• Kali 64 bit e17/MATE/Xfce/LXDE -- These are full versions with all the tools, but based on one of these alternate desktops rather than Gnome 3. There are no 32 bit images for these alternate desktops.
• Kali armel/armhf -- These are generic ARM images, but be aware that there are a lot of system-specific ARM images (such as Raspberry Pi) on a different download page, as detailed next.

In addition to these standard versions, the Offensive Security downloads page offers a variety of ARM and Virtual images. (Offensive Security is the company behind the Kali Linux distribution.)

• Kali for ARM devices -- Custom images for at least 10 different ARM-based devices, including the Raspberry Pi, and Chromebooks from HP, Samsung, and Acer. These are a sort of 'intermediate' image, they include some but not all of the tools, and they have an Xfce desktop.
• Kali for VMware/VirtualBox/Hyper-V -- Full versions with all tools and Gnome 3 desktop. VMware and Virtual box have both 32 and 64 bit versions; Hyper-V has only a 64 bit version.

The download pages include sha256 checksums for all of these images. Make sure you verify the checksum before installing -- just think about how embarrassing it would be to install a security-focused distribution from a compromised distribution image!

I have downloaded and installed the 64-bit full version, the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 version, and the VirtualBox 64-bit version. All of them installed and ran with absolutely no problem. Here are some notes about them:

PC 64-bit full version

This is a hybrid ISO image, so just copy it directly to a USB stick or burn it to a DVD. The boot menu offers you a variety of Live boots and an installer.

Notes:

• Booting to Live mode first is always a good idea, just to find out that things like display, keyboard, mouse, and networks all work properly before you install.
• The Kali installer is a slightly modified version of the Debian installer, so don't expect anything flashy or modern-looking. But like the Debian installer, it just works, very well.
• During the installation process, when it asks if you want to use a network mirror, you should answer yes, or else your installed system won't have the Kali repositories configured in the APT sources list, which means you wouldn't ever get any updates.
• The installation works just fine on both MBR and UEFI systems. On UEFI, it uses its own name for the UEFI boot directory, so there is no conflict if there happens to also be a Debian installation on the same system.
• You have to define the root password during installation. So when you boot the installed system, and it comes up with the login window, don't try to use the old standard or default Kali root password. This is the voice of experience talking to you: when you don't have much hair left anyway, you really don't want to tear out a lot of what's left out for such a silly reason.

Raspberry Pi 2/3 version

Unlike the PC version, this is not an installation image it is a snapshot. You install it in the same way that you install Raspbian, just uncompress the image and dump it to a microSD card.

Notes:

• Kali does not automatically expand the root file system during the first boot. This could catch you unaware, because Raspbian always does this. This is a good thing, however, because if you are running Kali, you probably don't want a totally lame single-partition installation. This way you can partition the SD card however you want after installation.
• Don't forget, this was a snapshot, not an installation image. You don't run through the installer, so you don't get to set the root password. The Raspberry Pi comes up with the old default root password. The very first thing you should do, immediately after logging in for the very first time, is change the password.
• One minor irritant: the keyboard layout doesn't seem to be stored across reboots properly. The snapshot image has a US keyboard, of course, but if I change that (through the Xfce menu / Settings / Keyboard / Layout), I can get a Swiss German layout -- but the next time I boot, it is back to a US keyboard. Even more strange is that if I go back to the keyboard layout preferences, it shows German (Switzerland), but in fact that map is not installed. Very strange.
• One other minor irritant: Bluetooth is not enabled by default on the Pi 2/3.

As I mentioned above, the Kali ARM images include a selection of the most commonly used Kali tools. If you want the full set of Kali tools, all you have to do is install the package kali-linux-full.

I have said in previous posts that I think Kali linux on a Raspberry Pi 3 is one of the best tools a security professional could have. But now I want to go one step further, so get ready for this...

I have tried a lot of different Linux distributions on the Raspberry Pi. I would say with no hesitation that if you are interested in an alternative to Raspbian, Kali Linux is the best choice I have seen yet. Obviously, if you are using the Raspberry Pi for educational or hobby purposes, Raspbian is the best choice. I has all the tools, libraries, languages, interfaces and such that you need for that. But if you are using a Raspberry Pi as a very low-cost desktop system, you might be happier with Kali Linux. One obvious reason might be that you either don't like the PIXEL desktop (based on LXDE), or that you absolutely want or need the Xfce desktop.

Virtual Machine Version

I have loaded the VirtualBox image, and ran it with no problem. It is an image of the full version, with all tools included, and the Gnome 3 desktop:

Notes:

• There was an issue with the USB 2.0 support. I got around that by simply going to the VM Settings and disabling USB altogether.
• The image is fairly large (around 3.3GB), and when that is imported into VirtualBox, it uses something like 8.5GB. Make sure you have enough free disk space.
• As with the ARM version, this is a snapshot not an installation image. So you don't get to set the root password during installation, it comes up with the default Kali root password.

Finally, I want to add a few words about another excellent Kali Linux project/product, the Kali Linux Revealed book and online course.

It is an in-depth description of using, installing, and customizing Kali Linux. It includes sections on package management, building and modifying the Linux kernel, deploying and managing Kali installations, including network deployment, and more. It is not only an excellent resource for anyone who wants to use Kali Linux, a lot of the information it contains is of general interest and use for other Linux distributions, so even experienced users and administrators are likely to find the book very useful.

The book is available free in PDF format from the link above, and as a paperback from Amazon. One way or another, if you are serious about using and/or administering Kali Linux, you definitely need to get this book and study it thoroughly.

Recent and related coverage

In addition to their full distribution, Kali Linux offers Light and Mini versions. Here's how I got on with them.

Combining two of my favorite things: Kali Linux and variety of Raspberry Pi models.

Read more on Linux

• 5 fundamental differences between Windows 10 and Linux (TechRepublic)
• Ataribox will have AMD inside, run Linux, cost under $300 (CNET)

In my previous post, I looked at the Full version of the new Kali Linux 2016.1 Rolling release. That version uses the Gnome 3 desktop and includes a large number of security, forensic, and penetration-testing utilities. In this post I am going to look at the Light version, which uses the Xfce desktop and includes only a few security utilities in the base installation, and the Mini version, which lets you choose your desktop, but includes no additional utilities in the base installation.

It seems to me that there are two reasons for the Kali Light distribution. First, a lot of people don't like using Gnome 3 -- especially a lot of experienced Linux users -- so this offers a popular alternative desktop. Second, by including very few additional security packages, it lets you build up the distribution with just the tools you want and need.

Most of the download and installation procedure is the same for the Light version as for the Full version, so I won't repeat it all here. The big difference is that it all goes a lot faster, because the Light ISO image is less than half the size of the Full ISO. The bad news is that even though it is listed as 0.8GB on the downloads page, it is actually about 1.0GB so it won't fit on a CD. You have to either burn it to a DVD or dump it to a USB stick. By today's standards that is not unusual, and probably doesn't even qualify as bad news. Oh well.

Installation was easy, as expected, the same as it was for the full version, and again there was no problem with UEFI firmware systems. On booting the installed system, it looks like this:

That's a nice looking Xfce desktop, but it is nowhere near as customized as the Kali Gnome desktop was. I think this is another part of the 'roll your own' philosophy; you can add whatever launchers you want/need to the desktop and panels. My previous post about customizing Xfce gives lots of (hopefully) useful information about that.

The Kali Light Xfce menu contains only seven categories of security utilities (compared to 14 in the full version), and each of those categories contains only one or two items, so you can see why this distribution is half the size of the full distribution.

In fact, I find the release announcement misleading about what is included in the Light distribution. It says that it just includes the 'top 10' metapackage but it doesn't look to me like that is true.

First, there are not 10 additional security utilities here, I can only see about 5 and some of the most obvious are missing (John the Ripper and Wireshark, for example).

Second, when I use apt-get to install the package kali-linux-top10, it shows me a huge list of what will be installed and it says that 1.5GB of additional space will be used. Hmm.

So, I am assuming that the top 10 statement in the release announcement was either a mistake or a euphemism for the most common utilities, and was not intended to literally mean the Kali top 10 package.

Anyway, the Light distribution includes a few of the most common programs - nmap, ncat, ncrack, aircrack-ng and sqlmap, but anything beyond that has to be installed from the Kali respositories. If you really want the top 10 utilities, just use apt-get install kali-linux-top10. If you want to pick-and-choose what gets installed, that is perfectly ok as well; apt-get install john or apt-get install wireshark and such work just fine.

Whatever you install will be added to the Xfce menus in the appropriate categories. Here you can see that after installing the top 10, new categories 07, 09 and 13 have been added, and the Password Attacks category (05) which originally contained only ncrack, now also includes john and hydra.

That is still nowhere near what is included in the full distribution, though. If you want to get the complete contents of the full distribution installed into this Xfce desktop version, use apt-get install kali-linux-full. That will bring in another 1,200 or so packages and use an additional 3GB of disk space.

Installing the full package took a pretty good bit of time, more than 30 minutes on my Acer Aspire E11. When it was finished, I finally had all of the same menu categories that the Gnome 3 version had.

OK, that's enough about the Kali Light distribution. Moving on to the Mini distribution, the news is not quite as good, at least initially.

The Kali Mini distribution is basically the same as the Debian 'tiny' distribution (with the repositories changed, of course). The ISO image is only 32MB - that is really small. It is a net-install image, which means that you must have an internet connection to install it, because that tiny ISO only contains enough to boot and run the installer, it has to get absolutely everything else from the network.

The bad news is that this image will not boot on UEFI firmware systems, unless you change the system to 'Legacy Boot' mode. The good news is that it works just fine on MBR systems. That doesn't help me much any more, because almost everything I have around here is UEFI, and I don't want to use Legacy Boot.

To get around this limitation, I got out the Lenovo T400 which I recently replaced on my desktop, so I was able to load and test it that way.

Booting the Mini ISO, the only option you get is Install - there are no Live options this time. The installation process is similar to the Full and Light versions, but this version installs absolutely none of the security/forensic/pentest utilities - not even the few that were included in the Light base distribution. Again, this means that you can create a system which contains exactly what you want - any only what you want.

In fact, at first glance (or on the first pass through this installer), you might think there is even more flexibility here, because as you go through the installation you will be asked to choose the desktop package(s) you want. The list includes Gnome, Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE and LXDE. Zowie, how good is that!

Well, don't get too excited, yet. I have tried both KDE and LXDE, and got mixed results. The KDE installation didn't really work all that well, but the LXDE installation seemed pretty good, and when I installed the kali-linux-top10 metapackage, everything showed up in the LXDE menus. I didn't try Cinnamon or MATE.

So the bottom line on the Kali Mini distribution is that it can be useful if you want to install from a really, really small image (does anybody remember mini-CD or even credit-card CD media?). It might also be interesting if you want to start from an absolute bare-bones system and carefully pick and choose the utilities that you want to install. But you would have to be really dedicated and really determined to do that.

If you want to think out of the ordinary, what about a Kali Linux installation with the i3 Window Manager? Now there's an interesting thought... As I have said before, the people that I know who work in this area (computer and network security, forensics and penetration testing) tend to be hard-core Linux users with a lot of experience. They usually aren't concerned with fancy window decorations, menus and such. They use a lot of keyboard shortcuts rather than taking their hand away to use a mouse. They very often work with multiple windows open, moving between them frequently, and they want to have at least several, or even better all of them, visible and easily accessible at all times. That sounds a lot like a job for i3 doesn't it? Hmmm...

Read more about Linux and open source:

Download Kali Linux 64 Bit