Book Image

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Michael Hixon, Justin Hutchens
Book Image

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Michael Hixon, Justin Hutchens

Overview of this book

With the ever-increasing amount of data flowing in today’s world, information security has become vital to any application. This is where Kali Linux comes in. Kali Linux focuses mainly on security auditing and penetration testing. This step-by-step cookbook on network scanning trains you in important scanning concepts based on version 2016.2. It will enable you to conquer any network environment through a range of network scanning techniques and will also equip you to script your very own tools. Starting with the fundamentals of installing and managing Kali Linux, this book will help you map your target with a wide range of network scanning tasks, including discovery, port scanning, fingerprinting, and more. You will learn how to utilize the arsenal of tools available in Kali Linux to conquer any network environment. The book offers expanded coverage of the popular Burp Suite and has new and updated scripts for automating scanning and target exploitation. You will also be shown how to identify remote services, how to assess security risks, and how various attacks are performed. You will cover the latest features of Kali Linux 2016.2, which includes the enhanced Sparta tool and many other exciting updates. This immersive guide will also encourage the creation of personally scripted tools and the skills required to create them.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Keeping Kali updated

Now that we have Kali Linux installed, we will want to keep it updated with the latest tools, patches, and improvements.

Getting ready

Prior to modifying the Kali Linux configuration, you will need to have installed the operating system on a virtual machine. If you haven't already done this, refer to the Installing Kali Linux recipe.

How to do it...

Kali Linux should be ready and configured after installation, but we should check anyway. Kali uses a package manager called apt-get.

  1. The first thing we want to do is check the sources apt-get will use to look for updates. Navigate to the /etc/apt/ directory; there you should see a file named sources.list. If the file doesn’t exist, it's okay; we will create it.
  2. Run the following command from the Terminal. If the file exists, it will open; if not, it will create it:
  1. Now, let's add the following sources to the file if they don’t already exist. Make sure that you do not add any additional sources as they may break your Kali installation:
        deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib
  1. Your file should look like the following:
  1. Once the file matches what we previously stated, save and close it. Now we will run a few commands. These commands should be run periodically to keep your system updated. The -y flag appended to apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade tells the command to assume yes when prompted:
  1. It may take the commands a while to execute, so feel free to get your caffeine fix while you are waiting. Reboot Kali Linux, and the procedure is done. You will want to run the previous commands periodically to keep your system up to date.

How it works...

Using a Kali Linux rolling update provides you with the latest package versions of your applications and testing tools, rather than needing to wait for the next static version of the operating system to be rolled out. Kali Linux comes pre-bundled with apt-get, this is the same package manager used by Ubuntu, and is what Kali Linux uses to keeping your distribution up to date.