Kali Linux tool categories
Kali Linux contains a number of tools that can be used during the penetration testing process. The penetration testing tools included in Kali Linux can be categorized into the following categories:
• Information gathering: This category contains several tools that can be used to gather information about DNS, IDS/IPS, network scanning, operating systems, routing, SSL, SMB, VPN, voice over IP, SNMP, e-mail addresses, and VPN.
• Vulnerability assessment: In this category, you can find tools to scan vulnerabilities in general. It also contains tools to assess the Cisco network, and tools to assess vulnerability in several database servers. This category also includes several fuzzing tools.
• Web applications: This category contains tools related to web applications such as the content management system scanner, database exploitation, web application fuzzers, web application proxies, web crawlers, and web vulnerability scanners.
• Password attacks: In this category, you will find several tools that can be used to perform password attacks, online or offline.
• Exploitation tools: This category contains tools that can be used to exploit the vulnerabilities found in the target environment. You can find exploitation tools for the network, Web, and database. There are also tools to perform social engineering attacks and find out about the exploit information.
• Sniffing and spoofing: Tools in this category can be used to sniff the network and web traffic. This category also includes network spoofing tools such as Ettercap and Yersinia.
• Maintaining access: Tools in this category will be able to help you maintain access to the target machine. You might need to get the highest privilege level in the machine before you can install tools in this category. Here, you can find tools for backdooring the operating system and web application. You can also find tools for tunneling.
• Reporting tools: In this category, you will find tools that help you document the penetration-testing process and results.
• System services: This category contains several services that can be useful during the penetration testing task, such as the Apache service, MySQL service, SSH service, and Metasploit service.
