>> In this lesson, I'm going to talk to you
about Kali Linux by Offensive Security.
Kali is an advanced penetration testing
distribution of Linux
that has been around in one form, or
another for a long time.
It was previously called BackTrack.
Just as Nmap is
a Swiss Army knife of cybersecurity tools,
Kali is certainly considered the Swiss
Army knife of cybersecurity operating systems.
The main reason I want to introduce it in
this course is because Nmap is already built into Kali.
If you want to use Kali, or you already use it,
there's no need to go through installing Nmap on it.
Also, it has a lot of
other really important tools built-in.
Let's talk about what Kali can do for you
and why you might consider using it for running Nmap.
Here are the learning objectives for this lesson.
First, we'll answer the question,
what is Kali Linux?
Then, we'll talk about the best way to get it.
The third question here is
>> an important one to consider,
>> and that is, how should you run it?
There are multiple versions of Kali
available, and they can be
run in a variety of ways depending on your purpose.
We'll discuss some of those ways, and
the things you should consider
>> when making your decision.
>> Then finally, we'll go through
a lab on running a version of Kali in
an Oracle VirtualBox along with a test Nmap scan.
You can learn everything you need to
know about Kali by visiting
Offensive Security's Kali website at kali.org.
But here are a couple of quick points about it.
First, the current version of Kali is very
refined with hundreds of
tools for the cybersecurity practitioner.
Offensive Security, who is
the company behind Kali suggests that
the current version is
their most advanced penetration testing
distribution ever.
As far as I know, there aren't
any other all-in-one Linux distributions, or
any other operating system for that matter that
combines so many cybersecurity tools into one.
I believe that every serious
cybersecurity practitioner simply
must have an installation of Kali at their disposal.
Many of you remember that
Kali used to be called BackTrack,
which was based on Slax,
>> and Knoppix Linux distributions.
>> It had a number of the same tools that
Kali offers, and originated from
the merger of WHAX,
>> and the Auditor Security Collection.
>> The first official release of Kali was in
March of 2013 as BackTrack was
completely re-engineered, and built on top of Debian.
Besides providing tools for penetration testing,
Kali also offers tools for security research,
digital forensics, and reverse engineering.
It has hundreds of tools, and will
run efficiently on almost any hardware.
Best of all, it's free,
open source, and FHS compliant,
which greatly simplifies navigating
the file system for Linux users
>> who transitioned to Kali.
>> Like most things, the best place to get
Kali is by going straight to the source.
Their website is kali.org.
At the top of their front page there is a link to
downloads which takes you directly
to all of the current Kali releases.
Or you can simply go straight
to kali.org write downloads.
If you choose to download, and use Kali,
I highly recommend using
the SHA-256 hash of
your download against what is provided on their site.
Kali is powerful, and you want to make sure that
power is used for good, and for your intended purpose.
If you don't know how to verify hash,
I'll show you in the lab.
There are a couple of different Kali images
depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
Your GUI or non GUI preference,
and your hardware constraints.
I even have Kali running on a $100 Raspberry Pi.
Surprisingly, it runs really good
and its size, and power requirements make it
easy to imperceptibly launch
an attack without physically being noticed.
If you want to give Kali a shot,
I recommend trying Kali light.
The download is quick, and it
has tons of tools including Nmap.
Kali will run in a bunch of different ways.
If you're looking for a solid
operating system for your computer,
you can simply load it, as your main OS.
One good thing about doing that is simply that
you will always have Kali's tools at your disposal.
It's Debian-based, so installing all of
your other productivity tools is simple.
If you don't want to run it as your main OS,
but want Kali to take full advantage of your hardware,
you can even set it up on your Mac or PC
to dual boot from your primary OS or Kali.
This does take some time,
>> and effort to accomplish though.
>> Probably the most popular way to run
Kali if you're not simply going to use it as
your primary OS is to run it as
a VM from your favorite hypervisor
or Virtual Machine Manager.
You have several options if you do that.
You can either create
a virtual hard disk, and go through
the full install of Kali,
or you can run it in live CD, DVD mode,
which essentially makes it a fresh
running copy every time it boots.
Now on to the lab. The main goal is to have
a version of Kali running on our Windows PC.
Once we get it working,
we'll test Nmap to make sure it's working.
The general steps will follow are included on
this slide. Let's get started.