Top 19 Kali Linux tools for vulnerability assessments

Kali Linux is a free operating system often used for conducting vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. Kali Linux has many tools to help with vulnerability assessment and network discovery. 

There are 19 powerful tools in Kali Linux for conducting vulnerability assessments and finding security loopholes across various environments. 

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What is a vulnerability assessment tool? 

A vulnerability assessment tool is a piece of software that helps you carry out tasks for identifying and resolving vulnerabilities in your computer systems. 

These tools examine web applications, mobile apps, network environments and any other network element where you might find vulnerabilities hackers can exploit. 

Vulnerability assessment tools should be able to identify all the risks, loopholes and vulnerabilities that might be present within your computer system. Some examples of the features you can expect these tools to have include: 

• Perform credentialed and non-credentialed scans 
• Update capabilities and stability fixes as new versions of the tool become available 
• Reliably identify areas of concern 
• Work well with other well-known vulnerability assessment tools 

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In this article, we take a closer look at some vulnerability assessment tools, as well as their essential functions and use cases. 

Web application vulnerability assessment tools 

Web applications are constantly developed and launched to cater to the evolving needs of end users. 

Some companies may not have the knowledge or resources to follow proper software development lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, which can introduce security issues that can impact the stability of the web application. 

By using a Kali Linux vulnerability scanner, you can identify issues in web apps built to work on Windows, iOS and Android devices. You can also perform a Kali Linux scan for vulnerabilities while performing penetration testing and other analyses on your applications. In this way, you can improve the safety of web applications. 

If an application or web service is compromised, it could spell disaster for the company that created it. Scenarios like this make organizations need to use a Kali Linux vulnerability scanner during web application security testing. 

Kali offers a range of vulnerability assessment tools that help you identify potential risks and vulnerabilities before they result in serious problems. Here are some of the most popular Kali Linux vulnerability scanner tools: 

1. Nikto: Nikto is an application that scans web-based applications and web servers for known bad files that could potentially be dangerous. Other things that it can detect include outdated configs, port scanning, username enumeration and more. 
2. Skipfish: Skipfish is an automated tool that performs reconnaissance tasks on web servers. It generates a sitemap and then recursively probes the site with penetration tests to identify vulnerabilities. 
3. Wapiti: Wapiti is another penetration testing tool that uses common methodologies, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting, as well as GET and POST methods in its attacking strategies. 
4. OWASP-ZAP: The Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) scanner is a pentesting app that allows you to test web apps while still in the dev stage. This lets you design tests to find problems before they get released into production environments. 
5. XSSPY: As the name suggests, XSSPY is a Python tool that tests for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in websites and web applications. After an initial scan that maps out the entire site, it begins the detailed task of scanning every element that it uncovered in search of XSS vulnerabilities. 
6. W3af: This web application framework lets you attack and audit web apps and uncovers and exploits web application vulnerabilities as part of your vulnerability assessment. It’s available as a GUI and console application, and it has over 130 different plugins for different tasks. 

Different scanners perform different functions, but some can scan web applications, databases, and networks. Some are only useful for scanning web applications, while others can also scan databases. Since every situation requires its own set of tools, Kali Linux is especially handy thanks to its long list of vulnerability assessment tools. 

Vulnerability assessment tools for network infrastructure testing 

Organizations often have complicated connectivity requirements consisting of physical locations where network infrastructure is housed within office buildings and cloud-based resources in data centers. 

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Security must take center stage with any enterprise operation, and since some vulnerabilities can only be found with the right technology, Kali Linux web scanning tools can be powerful resources. Here are some Kali Linux network scanning tools you can use to accurately pinpoint vulnerabilities: 

1. OpenVAS: With OpenVAS, you can perform vulnerability scans on web applications, networks and databases. One of OpenVAS’s standout features is its ability to scan quickly and accurately identify vulnerabilities hidden on your network. 
2. Fierce: Fierce is a script that is written in PERL and quickly identifies targets on a local network. It’s written primarily as an assessment or reconnaissance tool and doesn’t perform malicious actions. 
3. Metasploit framework: Metasploit is a well-known framework amongst penetration testers. It lets you scan your network and find issues before attackers can exploit them. 
4. Nmap: Nmap allows you to find computers on a network when they are online. It can also find open ports, banner detection, OS information and specific details about connected hosts at the time of the scan. 
5. Netcat: Netcat uses TCP and UDP connections to write data to and read data from the networked devices within your environment. Like many of the tools we’ve covered, it can be either integrated into scripts or run as a standalone tool. 
6. Unicornscan: This is a pentesting tool that allows you to send data over the network and then look at the results from vulnerable devices. It has many advanced flags and parameters, so it can be customized to work for specific tasks. 

Kali Linux network scanning tools check for problems in your network security. The more thorough the scan, the longer it takes to complete. Running intrusive scanners on a production network may also introduce some issues, such as increased traffic, false positives and general noisiness on the network. Selecting the right tool for the job is critical. 

Vulnerability assessment tools for mobile applications 

Users are adopting mobile apps at an ever-increasing rate. Like web applications, security must be woven into the app’s architecture. Otherwise, the publishers expose themselves and their clients to significant risks. 

The work of scanning an app for vulnerabilities is time-consuming. There are a lot of different features that you need to look for in Kali Linux scanning tools for mobile applications. You also need to understand which app elements are most likely to be targeted by threats, including: 

• Personally identifiable information (PII), such as full names, usernames and passwords 
• Device data like a user device’s IMEI numbers, user GPS locations, MAC addresses that can be used for tracking and any other device information 
• Badly implemented encryption that transmits unprotected data 
• Code within the application that leaves the mobile device vulnerable to known hacks and attacks 

The following tools are used to prevent the risks above and mitigate some of the more serious threats: 

1. App-Ray: This tool can check your mobile applications for various vulnerabilities, such as unknown sources, and prevents you from installing malicious apps on your mobile device. 
2. Codified Security: This platform allows you to upload your APK and IPA files and then scan these files for vulnerabilities. Using this platform, you can perform both static and dynamic tests. While penetration testing with Codified Security, you get tools to help you discover a range of user-dependent vulnerabilities and a library of third-party vulnerability tests. 
3. MSFVenom: MSFPayload and MSFEncode come together to give us MSFVenom. It can accomplish many of the tasks as the tools we mentioned above but has the advantage of operating within a single framework. 
4. Dexcalibur: This allows you to automate dynamic instrumentation tasks, including examining the data gathered from a hook, decompiling intercepted bytecode, writing hook code, managing hook messages and more. 
5. StaCoAn: You can use StaCoAn to perform static code analysis to identify API keys, API URLs and hardcoded credentials among other things. The open-source tool allows you to generate a report of the decompiled application. 
6. Runtime Mobile Security (RMS): RMS allows you to manipulate iOS and Android applications at runtime to identify vulnerabilities. You can hook into anything and dump items such as loaded classes, traces, value returns, etc. 

Mobile applications play important roles in our everyday lives, which makes them lucrative targets for cybercriminals. This means that you need to know how to compromise a mobile device and how to access it with a vulnerability assessment tool if you’re going to safeguard the devices you build apps for. 

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Assessing vulnerabilities 

Security vulnerabilities can be discovered through vulnerability assessments since they provide a faster and more flexible way to test your security posture. You also save your company time and money since a Kali Linux vulnerability scanner eliminates the need for multiple people to perform additional tests on your infrastructure. 

The best way to ensure security is to practice good cyber hygiene and infuse secure development principles into your dev life cycle. Otherwise, you increase the risk of a hacker infiltrating your infrastructure. You should supplement vulnerability scans with more detailed security audits and penetration tests to further enhance your security posture. 

The results of detailed security audits might reveal vulnerabilities that are easier to spot and could be missed by automated vulnerability scanners. 

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