Kali Linux 2021.3 has been released by Offensive Security and includes a new set of tools, improved virtualization support, and a new OpenSSL configuration that increases the attack surface.
Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers to perform penetration testing and security audits.
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With this release, the Kali Linux team introduces the following new features:
- OpenSSL – Wide compatibility by default
- New Kali-Tools– Kali-Tools completely revamped
- Better VM support in Live image session – Copy & paste and drag & drop from your machine to Kali VM by default
- New tools – From adversary emulation, to subdomain takeover and Wi-Fi attacks
- Kali NetHunter smartwatch – First of its kind for TicHunter Pro
- KDE 5.21 – Plasma desktop with new version bump
OpenSSL: All legacy protocols are enabled
Many Linux distributions disable older insecure protocols in OpenSSL, such as TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, to secure devices and websites.
However, as Kali Linux is a penetration testing distribution, it is expected that all protocols are enabled so that you can target all systems, even older devices that use insecure protocols.
With this release, Offensive Security is configuring OpenSSL for broad compatibility, which means they allow older ciphers and insecure protocols to increase the attack surface.
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Increased virtualization support
The Kali Live image has gained increased support for running in virtual environments such as VMware, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, and QEMU+Spice.
Offensive Security states that you can now use the Live image in a virtual environment and automatically get copy and paste and drag and drop functionality without having to install guest additions or other guest software.
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New tools in Kali Linux 2021.3
The new Kali Linux tools and utilities are listed below:
- Berate_ap – Orchestrating MANA rogue Wi-Fi Access Points
- CALDERA – Scalable automated adversary emulation platform
- EAPHammer – Targeted evil twin attacks against WPA2-Enterprise Wi-Fi networks
- HostHunter – Recon tool for discovering hostnames using OSINT techniques
- RouterKeygenPC – Generate default WPA/WEP Wi-Fi keys
- Subjack – Subdomain takeover
- WPA_Sycophant – Evil client portion of EAP relay attack
Redesigned Kali-Tools
Offensive Security has revamped the Kali-Tools website with a new design and speed optimizations, and the company hopes to make it available offline soon.
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Enhanced ARM support
The Kali Linux team continues to improve support for ARM devices with the following changes:
- Updated Kali ARM build-scripts:
Build-script to support the Gateworks Newport board (has documentation).
Build-script for “Pi-Tail” based on Raspberry Pi Zero W.
RaspberryPi Zero W based “P4wnP1” build-script with significant changes.
- All images should resize the filesystem on first boot.
- The default snakeoil cert, which fixes some tools that were not working previously.
- The images default to iptables-legacy and ip6tables-legacy for iptables support.
- Default locale en_US.UTF-8 on all images. You can change it if you wish.
- Raspberry Pi images can now use a wpa_supplicant.conf in the /boot partition.
- Raspberry Pi images come with a default kalipi-config and kalipi-tft-config.
How to get Kali Linux 2021.3
To start using Kali Linux 2021.3, you can upgrade your existing installation or download the ISO images for new installations and live distributions.
Those updating from a previous version, including installations on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), can use the following commands to upgrade to the latest version.
echo “deb https://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade
cp -i /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/
cp -i /etc/skel/.zshrc ~/
chsh -s /bin/zsh
[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -f
More details about Kali 2021.3 can be found on the Kali Linux website.
With information from bleeping computer
