Chapter 5: Uses and Applications of Kali Linux

Penetration testing

This is a mechanism that is utilized by organizations to ascertain the
robustness of their security infrastructure. Here, security professionals
will play the role of the attackers, whereby they will attempt to discover
flaws and vulnerabilities in a system before the malicious fellows do. One
key objective is the identification and reporting of vulnerabilities to
companies and organizations. As organizations become increasingly
security conscious and the cost of security breaches rises exponentially,
many large organizations are beginning to contract out security services.
One of these critical security services is penetration testing. A
penetration test is essentially a legal, commissioned hack to demonstrate
the vulnerability of a firm’s network and systems. Generally, organizations
conduct a vulnerability assessment first to find potential weaknesses in
their network, operating systems and services. I emphasize potential, as
this vulnerability scan includes a significant number of false positives
(things identified as vulnerabilities that are, in reality, not vulnerabilities).
It is the role of the penetration tester to attempt to hack, or penetrate, these
vulnerabilities. Only then can the organization know whether the weakness
is real and decide to invest time and money to close the vulnerability.

Espionage and military

Cyber espionage can be said to be the practice of accessing information
and secrets without the knowledge and permission of the entities being
targeted. They can be ordinary individuals, rivals, competitors, groups,
governments or even enemies. The objectives here are broad. They can be
political, economic, personal or even military-related. The techniques
used, too, are diverse. Hackers can use malicious software, cracking
techniques, proxy servers, among others, to attain their stated objectives.
Espionage can be carried out online by professionals from their computer
desks or it can be done by infiltration using trained moles and
conventional spies. In some circumstances, it can be carried by amateurish
hackers with malicious intent and software programmers. It is common
knowledge that every nation on earth carries out some form of cyber
espionage or even cyber warfare, albeit covertly. Gathering intelligence on
military activities of other countries has been made more cost-effective by
hacking. Thus, a hacker has their place cut out in the defense systems of
any nation.

Forensics:

For years, the popularity of Forensic Linux Live Boot environments has
become well known. There are so many forensic tools that are Linux based
on this distribution. Using Kali, forensic experts can do all that pertains to
their tradecraft starting from the initial triage, data imaging all the way to
case management and full analysis.

Reverse Engineering:

Recently, reverse engineering has become an indispensable skill in various
sectors, including law enforcement. Reverse Engineering is a primary
method that is used in the identification of vulnerabilities and the
development of exploits. That is on the offensive side of it. Defensively
speaking, reverse engineering can be utilized in the analysis of malware
that has been used to target a given system. Here, the objective will be to
establish the capabilities of a given piece of tradecraft.

Wireless Attacks:

Kali supports a wide range of wireless hacking tools. What makes wireless
networks a commonly attacked vector is their pervasive nature. Kali Linux
also supports multiple wireless cards and is a hacker’s favorite choice for
conducting attacks against different types of wireless networks

Password Attacks:

Kali Linux can be used for conducting password attacks where a user
encounters an authentication system. The OS comes with numerous useful
tools and utilities for this purpose. We have both offline and online
password attack tools that a Kali Linux user can use to deal with hashing
and encryption systems

Database Assessment:

Kali Linux is capable of database attacks such as SQL injection and
attacking credentials. All this is made possible by the tools present in
Kali’s vast repositories that can be used for testing attack vectors ranging
from data extraction and analysis to SQL injection.

Sniffing and Spoofing:

Again, Kali Linux has plenty of tools an aspiring hacker or a professional
one can use to get access to data as it is being transmitted over the
network. You can use spoofing tools to impersonate a networks’ legitimate
user and then use the sniffing tools if you wish to capture and analyze data
you have just captured. These tools are a lethal combination when used
together

Stress Testing

To check whether your system is stable, you carry out a stress test on it. In
this scenario, you will use the numerous tools provided by Kali Linux to
generate more than normal traffic. This way you will be able to know the
limits of your system. The tools for stress testing can either be proprietary
or open-source. As an expert, it is essential that you know all the tools that
are used for testing a system’s availability.

Hardware Hacking

Another application of Kali Linux is in hardware hacking. Kali Linux.

comes with the following tools that can be used to accomplish this task.

android-sdk -The Android SDK provides you the API libraries
and developer tools necessary to build, test and debug apps for
Android.

apktool - It is a tool for reverse engineering 3rd party, closed,
binary Android apps. It can decode resources to the nearly
original form and rebuild them after making some
modifications; it makes possible to debug smali code step by
step. Also, it makes working with the app easier because of
project-like files structure and automation of some repetitive
tasks like building apk, etc

Arduino -- This is an electronics prototyping platform that is
open-source. It is based on easy-to-use, flexible software and
hardware.

Sakis3G -Sakis3G is a tweaked shell script that is supposed to
work out-of-the-box for establishing a 3G connection with any
combination of modem or operator. It automatically setups your
USB or Bluetooth™ modem and may even detect operator
settings. You should try it when anything else fails.

Smali -smali/baksmali is an assembler/disassembler for the
dex format used by dalvik, Android’s Java VM implementation.
The syntax is loosely based on Jasmin’s/dedexer’s syntax and
supports the full functionality of the dex format (annotations,
debug info, line info, etc.)