Foreword

The sixteen high-end laptops ordered for your pentesting team just arrived, and you have been
tasked to set them up—for tomorrow’s offsite engagement. You install Kali and boot up one of the
laptops only to find that it is barely usable. Despite Kali’s cutting-edge kernel, the network cards
and mouse aren’t working, and the hefty NVIDIA graphics card and GPU are staring at you blankly,
because they lack properly installed drivers. You sigh.
In Kali Live mode, you quickly type lspci into a console, then squint. You scroll through the
hardware listing: “PCI bridge, USB controller, SATA controller. Aha! Ethernet and Network con-
trollers.” A quick Google search for their respective model numbers, cross referenced with the
Kali kernel version, reveals that these cutting-edge drivers haven’t reached the mainline kernel
yet.
But all is not lost. A plan is slowly formulating in your head, and you thank the heavens for the
Kali Linux Revealed book that you picked up a couple of weeks ago. You could use the Kali Live-
Build system to create a custom Kali ISO, which would have the needed drivers baked into the
installation media. In addition, you could include the NVIDIA graphics drivers as well as the CUDA
libraries needed to get that beast of a GPU to talk nicely to hashcat, and have it purr while cracking
password hashes at blistering speeds. Heck, you could even throw in a custom wallpaper with a
Microsoft Logo on it, to taunt your team at work.
Since the hardware profiles for your installations are identical, you add a preseeded boot option to
the ISO, so that your team can boot off a USB stick and have Kali installed with no user interaction—
the installation takes care of itself, full disk encryption and all.
Perfect! You can now generate an updated version of Kali on demand, specifically designed and
optimized for your hardware. You saved the day. Mission complete!
With the deluge of hardware hitting the market, this scenario is becoming more common for
those of us who venture away from mainstream operating systems, in search of something leaner,
meaner, or more suitable to our work and style.
This is especially applicable to those attracted to the security field, whether it be an alluring hobby,
fascination, or line of work. As newcomers, they often find themselves stumped by the environ-
ment or the operating system. For many newcomers Kali is their first introduction to Linux.
We recognized this shift in our user base a couple of years back, and figured that we could help
our community by creating a structured, introductory book that would guide users into the world
 of security, while giving them all the Linux sophistication they would need to get started. And so,
the Kali book was born—now available free over the Internet for the benefit of anyone interested
in entering the field of security through Kali Linux.
As the book started taking shape, however, we quickly realized that there was untapped potential.
This would be a great opportunity to go further than an introductory Kali Linux book and explore
some of the more interesting and little-known features. Hence, the name of the book: Kali Linux
Revealed.
By the end, we were chuffed with the result. The book answered all our requirements and I’m
proud to say it exceeded our expectations. We came to the realization that we had inadvertently
enlarged the book’s potential user base. It was no longer intended only for newcomers to the
security field, but also included great information for experienced penetration testers who needed
to improve and polish their control of Kali Linux—allowing them to unlock the full potential of
our distribution. Whether they were fielding a single machine or thousands across an enterprise,
making minor configuration changes or completely customizing down to the kernel level, building
their own repositories, touching the surface or delving deep into the amazing Debian package
management system, Kali Linux Revealed provides the roadmap.
With your map in hand, on behalf of myself and the entire Kali Linux team, I wish you an exciting,
fun, fruitful, and “revealing” journey!
Muts
February 2017

XVIII Kali Linux Revealed

 Introduction
Kali Linux is the world’s most powerful and popular penetration testing platform, used by security
professionals in a wide range of specializations, including penetration testing, forensics, reverse
engineering, and vulnerability assessment. It is the culmination of years of refinement and the
result of a continuous evolution of the platform, from WHoppiX to WHAX, to BackTrack, and now
to a complete penetration testing framework leveraging many features of Debian GNU/Linux and
the vibrant open source community worldwide.
Kali Linux has not been built to be a simple collection of tools, but rather a flexible framework
that professional penetration testers, security enthusiasts, students, and amateurs can customize
to fit their specific needs.

Why This Book?

Kali Linux is not merely a collection of various information security tools that are installed on a
standard Debian base and preconfigured to get you up and running right away. To get the most
out of Kali, it is important to have a thorough understanding of its powerful Debian GNU/Linux
underpinnings (which support all those great tools) and learning how you can put them to use in
your environment.
Although Kali is decidedly multi-purpose, it is primarily designed to aid in penetration testing.
The objective of this book is not only to help you feel at home when you use Kali Linux, but also to
help improve your understanding and streamline your experience so that when you are engaged
in a penetration test and time is of the essence, you won’t need to worry about losing precious
minutes to install new software or enable a new network service. In this book, we will introduce
you first to Linux, then we will dive deeper as we introduce you to the nuances specific to Kali
Linux so you know exactly what is going on under the hood.
This is invaluable knowledge to have, particularly when you are trying to work under tight time
constraints. It is not uncommon to require this depth of knowledge when you are getting set up,
troubleshooting a problem, struggling to bend a tool to your will, parsing output from a tool, or
leveraging Kali in a larger-scale environment.
 Is This Book for You?

If you are eager to dive into the intellectually rich and incredibly fascinating field of information
security, and have rightfully selected Kali Linux as a primary platform, then this book will help
you in that journey. This book is written to help first-time Linux users, as well as current Kali
users seeking to deepen their knowledge about the underpinnings of Kali, as well as those who
have used Kali for years but who are looking to formalize their learning, expand their use of Kali,
and fill in gaps in their knowledge.
In addition, this book can serve as a roadmap, technical reference, and study guide for those pur-
suing the Kali Linux Certified Professional certification.

General Approach and Book Structure

This book has been designed so that you can put your hands on Kali Linux right from the start.
You don’t have to read half of the book to get started. Every topic is covered in a very pragmatic
manner, and the book is packed with samples and screenshots to help make the explanations more
concrete.
In chapter 1, “About Kali Linux” [page 2], we define some basic terminology and explain the pur-
pose of Kali Linux. In chapter 2, “Getting Started with Kali Linux” [page 14], we guide you step-by-
step from the download of the ISO image to getting Kali Linux running on your computer. Next
comes chapter 3, “Linux Fundamentals” [page 48] which supplies the basic knowledge that you
need to know about any Linux system, such as its architecture, installation process, file system
hierarchy, permissions, and more.
At this point, you have been using Kali Linux as live system for a while. With chapter 4, “Installing
Kali Linux” [page 66] you will learn how to make a permanent Kali Linux installation (on your hard
disk) and with chapter 5, “Configuring Kali Linux” [page 108] how to tweak it to your liking. As
a regular Kali user, it is time to get familiar with the important resources available to Kali users:
chapter 6, “Helping Yourself and Getting Help” [page 128] gives you the keys to deal with the
unexpected problems that you will likely face.
With the basics well covered, the rest of the book dives into more advanced topics: chapter 7,
“Securing and Monitoring Kali Linux” [page 156] gives you tips to ensure that your Kali Linux
installation meets your security requirements. Next, chapter 8, “Debian Package Management”
[page 176] explains how to leverage the full potential of the Debian packaging ecosystem. And
in chapter 9, “Advanced Usage” [page 228], you learn how to create a fully customized Kali Linux
ISO image. All those topics are even more relevant when you deploy Kali Linux at scale in an
enterprise as documented in chapter 10, “Kali Linux in the Enterprise” [page 258].

XX Kali Linux Revealed

The last chapter, chapter 11, “Introduction to Security Assessments” [page 284], makes the link
between everything that you have learned in this book and the day-to-day work of security pro-
fessionals.

Acknowledgments of Raphaël Hertzog

I would like to thank Mati Aharoni: in 2012, he got in touch with me because I was one out of
dozens of Debian consultants and he wanted to build a successor to BackTrack that would be based
on Debian. That is how I started to work on Kali Linux, and ever since I have enjoyed my journey
in the Kali world.
Over the years, Kali Linux got closer to Debian GNU/Linux, notably with the switch to Kali Rolling,
based on Debian Testing. Now most of my work, be it on Kali or on Debian, provides benefits to the
entire Debian ecosystem. And this is exactly what keeps me so motivated to continue, day after
day, month after month, year after year.
Working on this book is also a great opportunity that Mati offered me. It is not the same kind
of work but it is equally rewarding to be able to help people and share with them my expertise
of the Debian/Kali operating system. Building on my experience with the Debian Administrator’s
Handbook, I hope that my explanations will help you to get started in the fast-moving world of
computer security.
I would also like to thank all the Offensive Security persons who were involved in the book: Jim
O’Gorman (co-author of some chapters), Devon Kearns (reviewer), Ron Henry (technical editor),
Joe Steinbach and Tony Cruse (project managers). And thank you to Johnny Long who joined to
write the preface but ended up reviewing the whole book.

Acknowledgments of Jim O’Gorman

I would like to thank everyone involved in this project for their contributions, of which mine were
only a small part. This book, much like Kali Linux itself was a collaborative project of many hands
making light work. Special thanks to Raphaël, Devon, Mati, Johnny, and Ron for taking on the
lion’s share of the effort. Without them, this book would not have come together.

Acknowledgments of Mati Aharoni

It has been a few years since Kali Linux was first released, and since day one, I have always dreamt
of publishing an official book which covers the Kali operating system as a whole. It is therefore
a great privilege for me to finally see such a book making it out to the public. I would like to
sincerely thank everyone involved in the creation of this project—including Jim, Devon, Johnny,

Introduction XXI
 and Ron. A very special thanks goes to Raphaël for doing most of the heavy lifting in this book,
and bringing in his extensive expertise to our group.

Acknowledgments of Joe O’Gorman - 2021 Revision

Kali Linux has changed a lot since Kali Linux Revealed first released back in 2017. From additional
developers to moving away from using root as the default user, lots of progress has been made
over the years. Kali Linux Revealed was due for an updated revision, and I am honored for the
opportunity to have contributed to this epic project during the revision process.

XXII Kali Linux Revealed