Book Image

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Himanshu Sharma
Book Image

Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Himanshu Sharma

Overview of this book

Many organizations have been affected by recent cyber events. At the current rate of hacking, it has become more important than ever to pentest your environment in order to ensure advanced-level security. This book is packed with practical recipes that will quickly get you started with Kali Linux (version 2018.4 / 2019), in addition to covering the core functionalities. The book will get you off to a strong start by introducing you to the installation and configuration of Kali Linux, which will help you to perform your tests. You will also learn how to plan attack strategies and perform web application exploitation using tools such as Burp and JexBoss. As you progress, you will get to grips with performing network exploitation using Metasploit, Sparta, and Wireshark. The book will also help you delve into the technique of carrying out wireless and password attacks using tools such as Patator, John the Ripper, and airoscript-ng. Later chapters will draw focus to the wide range of tools that help in forensics investigations and incident response mechanisms. As you wrap up the concluding chapters, you will learn to create an optimum quality pentest report. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to conduct advanced penetration testing, thanks to the book’s crisp and task-oriented recipes.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Configuring the Xfce environment

Xfce is a free, fast, and lightweight desktop environment for Unix and Unix-like platforms. It was started by Olivier Fourdan in 1996. The name Xfce originally stood for XForms Common Environment, but since that time Xfce has been rewritten twice and no longer uses the XForms toolkit.

How to do it...

  1. We start by using the following command to install Xfce, along with all its plugins and goodies. If for some reason it fails, we should run apt update first:
apt-get install kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base xfce4 xfce4-places-plugin xfce4-goodies

The following screenshot shows the preceding command:

  1. Type Y when it asks for confirmation on additional space requirements.
  2. Select OK on the dialog box that appears.
  3. Select Lightdm as our default desktop manager and press Enter.
  4. When the installation is complete, open a Terminal window and type the following command:
update-alternatives --config x-session-manager

The following screenshot shows the output of the preceding command:

  1. Choose the xfce-session option (in our case, 3) and press Enter.
  1. Log out and log in again, and we will see the Xfce environment:

Now let's have a look at the configuration of MATE environment.