One of the many useful things we can do with APT is create metapackages, which are effectively empty packages that declare a list of other packages as dependencies. Kali Linux includes metapackages for password cracking, software-defined radio, wireles...

We have been hearing a lot about WireGuard lately and with it being recently added to the Kali repos, we thought we would give it a quick try to see what all the fuss is about. All in all, we found this is a really nice and quick to configure VPN solut...

We love it when community members come up with new ideas or interesting builds, and this one caught our attention. Jacek Kowalczyk hit us up on twitter with a really interesting story. His approach to tweaking Kali to be specific to his needs is exactl...

Another edition of Hacker Summer Camp has come and gone. We had a great time meeting our users, new and old, particularly at our Black Hat and DEF CON Dojos, which were led by our great friend @ihackstuff and the rest of the OffSec crew. Now that every...

We use live-build to create our official Kali releases and we encourage users to jump in and build their own customized versions of Kali whenever we can. Our documentation of the process is one of the most popular items on our documentation site, and t...

We have covered how to create secure “throw-away hack boxes” using the Raspberry Pi before, but we thought it was time to go back and take a look at the process again. With all the new Raspberry Pi models and Kali changes from when we last ...

UPDATE NOV 2019
This post is out of date as of 2019 as powershell has been added to the primary repos. Just do a:
apt update && apt -y install powershell

And you will have powershell on your system.
Old Post
You may already be aware that you c...

This Kali release is the first to include the Linux 4.15 kernel, which includes the x86 and x64 fixes for the much-hyped Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. It also includes much better support for AMD GPUs and support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtua...

In an earlier post, we covered Package Management in Kali Linux. With the ease of installation that APT provides, we have the choice amongst tens of thousands of packages but the downside is, we have tens of thousands of packages. Finding out what pack...

No, really…this isn’t clickbait. For the past few weeks, we’ve been working with the Microsoft WSL team to get Kali Linux introduced into the Microsoft App Store as an official WSL distribution and today we’re happy to announce...

Welcome to our first release of 2018, Kali Linux 2018.1. This fine release contains all updated packages and bug fixes since our 2017.3 release last November. This release wasn’t without its challenges–from the Meltdown and Spectre exciteme...

“Whether you’re new to the fight, or a seasoned pro, don’t stop training…”

This statement, like the video that introduced it, has real punch. We did this on purpose to get you fired up, excited about your training, ...

Update : This post is outdated. For a better way of getting Kali Linux on Windows 10, install Kali Linux from the App store.
We’re always on the prowl for novel environments to run Kali on, and with the introduction of the Windows Subsystem for L...

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Kali Linux 2017.3, which includes all patches, fixes, updates, and improvements since our last release. In this release, the kernel has been updated to 4.13.10 and it includes some notable improv...

Users often request the addition of vulnerability scanners to Kali, most notably the ones that begin with “N”, but due to licensing constraints, we do not include them in the distribution. Fortunately, Kali includes the very capable OpenVAS...

WPA2 Key Reinstallation AttaCK or KRACK attack
Recently, Mathy Vanhoef of imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven, discovered a serious weakness in WPA2 known as the Key Reinstallation AttaCK (or KRACK) attack. Their overview, Key Reinstallation Attacks: Breaking WP...

The Advanced Package Tool (APT) is how programs, libraries, documentation, and even the kernel itself are installed and managed on Kali and other Debian-based derivatives. APT often works so well that many users don’t pay any particular attention...

We are happy to announce the release of Kali Linux 2017.2, available now for your downloading pleasure. This release is a roll-up of all updates and fixes since our 2017.1 release in April. In tangible terms, if you were to install Kali from your 2017....

VMware Fusion Kali USB Boot
One of the fun, and often necessary, features of Kali Linux is the ability to create really killer, completely customized live-boot installations. Normally stored on a USB drive, these installations put the power of Kali Lin...

The Kali community is a pretty crazy thing. There are folks all over the world doing interesting things with Kali Linux and far too often, these cool projects get overlooked. Part of the problem is that the community is spread out all over the ’n...

Finally, it’s here! We’re happy to announce the availability of the Kali Linux 2017.1 rolling release, which brings with it a bunch of exciting updates and features. As with all new releases, you have the common denominator of updated packa...

A couple of weeks back we added more HTTPS support to our Kali infrastructure, and wanted to give our users some guidance and point out what’s new. While our Kali Linux download page (and shasums) has always been served via HTTPS, our mirror redi...

Due to increasing popularity of cloud-based instances for password cracking, we decided to focus our efforts into streamlining Kali’s approach. We’ve noticed that Amazon’s AWS P2-Series and Microsoft’s Azure NC-Series are focuse...

Introducing the KLCP Certification
After almost two years in the making, it is with great pride that we announce today our new Kali Linux Professional certification - the first and only official certification program that validates one’s proficie...

We’re happy to announce that we’ve once again listed our Kali Linux images on the Amazon AWS marketplace. You can now spin up an updated Kali machine easily through your EC2 panel. Our current image is a “full” image, which cont...

Kali Linux in the Azure Marketplace
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been working on building and implementing Kali 2016.2 in the Azure Marketplace. We’re happy to announce that from today on, you can spin up a Kali machine from the Azur...

We’re well recovered from the Black Hat and DEF CON Vegas conferences and as promised, we’re launching our second Kali Rolling ISO release aka Kali 2016.2. This release brings a whole bunch of interesting news and updates into the world of ...

Kali Linux Dojo, BlackHat 2016 - Las Vegas
We have really enjoyed doing the Dojo at Black Hat the last few years. It’s been a great opportunity to show off some of the lesser known (but oh so useful) features of Kali Linux as well as interact wit...

The folks at Black Hat have been kind enough to invite us once again to deliver a Kali Dojo in Las Vegas this year. The event will be held on the 4th of August at the Mandalay Bay hotel, and will be open to all Black Hat pass types. This year our Dojo ...

Our First Release of Kali-Rolling (2016.1)
Today marks an important milestone for us with the first public release of our Kali Linux rolling distribution. Kali switched to a rolling release model back when we hit version 2.0 (codename), however the rol...

Kali Sana Release Aftermath
Kali Linux 2.0 has been out for a couple of months and the response has been great, with well over a million unique downloads of Kali 2.0 as a testament. Release day was somewhat hectic for us, as we did not anticipate the s...

We’ve been awfully quiet lately, which usually means something is brewing below the surface. In the past few months we’ve been working feverishly on our next generation of Kali Linux and we’re really happy with how it’s looking ...

For the latest information, please see our documentation on Docker
Last week we received an email from a fellow penetration tester, requesting official Kali Linux Docker images that he could use for his work. We bootstrapped a minimal Kali Linux 1.1.0a...

A short while ago, we packaged and pushed out a few important wireless penetration testing tool updates for aircrack-ng, pixiewps and reaver into Kali’s repository. These new additions and updates are fairly significant, and may even change your ...

Vulnerability scanning is a crucial phase of a penetration test and having an updated vulnerability scanner in your security toolkit can often make a real difference by helping you discover overlooked vulnerable items. For this reason, we’ve manu...

After almost two years of public development (and another year behind the scenes), we are proud to announce our first point release of Kali Linux - version 1.1.0. This release brings with it a mix of unprecedented hardware support as well as rock solid...

Squash the Bugs with Kali 1.0.9a
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a bunch of nasty bugs hit the scene, from shellshock to Debian apt vulnerabilities. As we prefer not to ship vulnerable ISOs, we’ve rolled up new images for our Kali...

Now that we have caught our breath after the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences, we have put aside some time to fix an annoying bug in our 1.0.8 ISO releases related to outdated firmware as well as regenerate fresh new ARM and VMware images (courtesy of...

The long awaited Kali Linux USB EFI boot support feature has been added to our binary ISO builds, which has prompted this early Kali Linux 1.0.8 release. This new feature simplifies getting Kali installed and running on more recent hardware which requi...

Kernel 3.14, Tool Updates, Package Improvements
Kali Linux 1.0.7 has just been released, complete with a whole bunch of tool updates, a new kernel, and some cool new features. Check out our changelog for a full list of these items. As usual, you don&rs...

One of our goals when developing Kali Linux was to provide multiple metapackages that would allow us to easily install subsets of tools based on their particular needs. Until recently, we only had a handful of these meta packages but we have since expa...

Kali Linux in the Amazon EC2 Marketplace
EDIT: For updated Kali Rolling images in the Amazon AWS, check this post.
After several weeks of “back and forth” with the Amazon EC2 team, Kali Linux has finally been approved into the Amazon EC2 ma...

Kali Linux contains a large number of very useful tools that are beneficial to information security professionals. One set of such tools belongs to the Pass-the-Hash toolkit, which includes favorites such as pth-winexe among others, already packaged in...

There’s been a fair amount of discussion around the recently introduced LUKS nuke patch we added to the cryptsetup package in Kali Linux. We wanted to take this opportunity to better explain this feature, as well as demonstrate some useful approa...

Kernel 3.12, LUKS nuke, Amazon AMI / Google Compute images and more!
It’s been a while since our last minor release which makes 1.0.6 a more significant update than usual. With a new 3.12 kernel, a LUKS nuke feature, new Kali ARM build scripts, a...

Kali Linux Full Disk Encryption
As penetration testers, we often need to travel with sensitive data stored on our laptops. Of course, we use full disk encryption wherever possible, including our Kali Linux machines, which tend to contain the most sensi...

We’re always on the lookout for and interesting ARM hardware for Kali Linux. Whether it’s a Galaxy Note or a USB stick sized SS808, we want to see Kali run on it. You can therefore imagine our excitement, when we first laid our eyes on the ...

Today we are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Kali Linux 1.0.5 with a rollup of various tool additions, fixes, and upgrades, including our fix for the encrypted encrypted LVM installation issue that we documented last week. As usual, u...

A little while back, a bug with the LVM encrypted install in Kali Linux 1.0.4 was reported in our bug tracker. This bug was high priority in our TODO as encrypted installs are an important feature in our industry so we wanted to squash this bug ASAP. T...

Whenever we are given the opportunity to describe Kali Linux, we use the word “powerful”. Have you ever wondered or asked yourself why exactly we consider Kali to be so “Powerful”? Why is Kali any different or better from say, a...

In keeping with our tradition of publishing new releases during the annual Black Hat and DEF CON conferences, we are pleased to announce the availability of Kali Linux 1.0.4. The last few months since the initial release of Kali have seen a large numbe...

We’ve just pushed a bunch of packages, tools, and utilities to the main Kali repositories. These tools have been on the top of our wish list for a while and some of them were quite challenging to package. Before we start telling you of our packag...

A couple of weeks ago, we were approached (independently) by two blind security enthusiasts who both drew our attention to the fact that Kali Linux had no built-in accessibility features. This made Kali difficult, if not impossible, to both install and...

We’ve been busy this week, still behind on our emails, but going strong with Kali development. We packaged some new tools which were pointed out by the community as missing, such as inguma, arachni, bully, lbd, uniscan, automater, as well as star...

Five days into the Kali Linux release at BlackHat EU in Amsterdam, and we’re still not fully recovered. Since the release, we’ve had just over 90,000 downloads, a dozen or so package updates, added more articles to the Kali Documentation, s...

Enter Kali Linux
“So, what’s the difference between BackTrack and Kali?” you might be asking. Unfortunately for us, that’s not a simple question to answer. It’s a mix between “everything” and “not much&rd...

Kali Linux, the rising
It’s been 7 years since we released our first version of BackTrack Linux, and the ride so far has been exhilarating. When the dev team started talking about BackTrack 6 (almost a year ago), each of us put on paper a few &ld...