Original subtitles

getting comfortable with Kali Linux Kali

Linux is developed funded and maintained

by offensive security it contains

several hundred tools that are geared

towards various information security

tasks such as penetration testing

security research computer forensics and

reverse engineering the goal of this

module is to provide a baseline and

prepare you for the upcoming modules

regardless of your skill level take time

to appropriately focus on this module

and accept Abraham Lincoln's advice he

once said give me six hours to chop down

a tree and I will spend the first four

sharpening the axe

booting up kali linux for best results

and consistency with the lab guide be

sure to use the 64-bit Kali Linux

virtual machine any deviation from the

standard build could create a work

environment that is inconsistent with

the course training material on first

boot it's important to change all

default passwords from a terminal using

the password command let's do that now

throughout the course we will use the

callee user account it may be tempting

to log in as the root user but this is

not recommended the root user has

unrestricted access and using it

increases the risk of accidentally

damaging our system

for commands that require elevated

privileges we'll use pseudo followed by

the command we wish to run and provide

our password when prompted

the callee menu the Kali Linux menu

includes categorical links for many of

the tools present in the distribution

this structure helps clarify the primary

role of each tool and provides context

for its usage take some time to navigate

the Kali Linux menus to help familiarize

yourself with the available tools and

their categories

Kellee documentation as a full-blown

operating system Kali Linux offers so

many features and capabilities that we

cannot possibly explore them all in this

module to supplement the information in

this module and help sharpen your axe

there are several official kali linux

resources available for further research

and study let's take a look at some of

them now

this is the official Kali Linux

documentation this site contains the

most current Kali documentation details

many common procedures and should be

considered your first stop for Kali

Linux troubleshooting and support the

next stop for troubleshooting and

support is the Kali Linux support forum

before posting on this forum read the

rules and guidelines non-compliant posts

are often moderated or ignored before

creating a new thread be sure to

thoroughly search the forum's for a

previously posted solution

as you already know Cali features many

penetration testing and forensics tools

the Cali tools site lists most of these

and provides a quick reference for each

here we can track the versions of the

tools against their upstream sources and

view information about each of the meta

packages meta packages provide the

flexibility to install specific subsets

of tools based on our particular needs

including wireless web applications

forensics software-defined radio and

more

occasionally certain tools may crash or

produce unexpected results when this

happens we can search for the given

error message on the kali linux bug

tracker to determine whether or not the

issue is a bug and if it is how it can

be resolved

the Kali Linux training site hosts the

official Kali Linux manual and training

course the site hosts the Kali Linux

revealed book exercises designed to test

your understanding a dedicated support

forum and an abundance of useful

information to help better acquaint

yourself with Kali Linux

finding your way around Cali

the Linux file system Kali Linux adheres

to the file system hierarchy standard

which provides a familiar and universal

layout for all Linux users the

directories you'll find most useful are

slash bin which contains basic programs

like LS CD and cap

/ Espen which contains system programs

such as fdisk make FS and cysts ETL

/sco figuration files

slash temp which contains temporary

files that are typically deleted on boot

slash user slash bin which contains

applications like apt and cat an nmap

and slash user slash share which

contains application support and data

files there are many other somewhat more

obscure directories which you'll rarely

need to explore but make sure you

understand these basics before

continuing

basic Linux commands next let's dig into

Kali Linux usage and explore some basic

Linux commands man pages most Linux

command line executable programs provide

a formal piece of documentation called

manual or man pages man pages generally

have a name a synopsis a description of

the commands purpose and the

corresponding options parameters or

switches man pages contain not only

information about user commands but also

documentation regarding system

administration commands programming

interfaces and more if you're unsure

which manual section you want to read

from you can do a keyword search for

example let's assume we're interested in

learning a bit more about the format of

the etsy password file typing man

password at the command line shows

information regarding the password

command which is not what we're

interested in

however if we use the - K option we can

perform a keyword search we can further

narrow the search with the help of a

regular expression it's important to

understand regular expressions so refer

to the lab guide for additional

resources and information

we can now look at the exact password

manual page we're interested in by

referencing the appropriate section

man pages are typically the quickest way

to find documentation on a given command

so take some time to explore them in a

bit more detail

apropos with the apropos command we can

search the list of man page descriptions

for a possible match based on a keyword

although this is a bit crude it's often

helpful for finding a particular command

based on the description suppose we want

to partition a hard drive but can't

remember the name of the command we can

figure this out with an apropos search

for partition notice that apropos seems

to perform the same function as man - K

this is because they are in fact

equivalent

listing files the LS command prints a

basic file listing to the screen we can

modify the output results with various

wildcards

the - a option is used to display all

files including hidden ones and the -

one option displays each file on a

single line which is very useful for

automation

moving around Linux does not use windows

style drive letters instead all files

folders and devices are children of the

root directory represented by the

forward slash character we can use the

CD command followed by a path to change

to the specified directory the PWD

command will print the current directory

which is helpful if you get lost

running CD followed by the tilde

character will return to the home

directory

creating directories the mate directory

command followed by the name of a

directory creates the specified

directory

directory names and Linux may contain

spaces but this is considered bad form

since spaces are used to separate

commands and parameters consider this

example

as we can see a directory named with

spaces can create confusion unless we

wrap it in quotes

instead many users choose hyphens or

underscores instead of spaces in

directory and file names these

characters also make autocompletes

which are executed with a tab key much

easier we can create multiple

directories at once with the incredibly

useful - P option which will also create

any required parent directories this can

be combined with brace expansion to

efficiently create complex directory

structures for example let's create a

directory called test and within that

directory create three sub directories

called recon exploit and report

again refer to the lab guide for more

information about regular expressions

and brace expansions

finding files in Kali Linux three of the

most common commands used to locate

files in Kali Linux include find locate

and which these utilities have

similarities but work and return data in

different ways and are useful in

different circumstances which the which

command searches through directories

defined in the path environment variable

for a given file name this variable

contains a listing of directories that

Kali searches when a command is issued

without its path if a match is found

which returns the full path to the file

locate the locate command is the

quickest way to find the location of

files and directories within the file

system in order to provide a much

shorter search time locate searches a

built in database named locate DB rather

than the entire hard disk itself this

database is automatically updated on a

regular basis by the cron scheduler but

it can be updated manually with the

update DB command to search for a given

file pass its name to locate

find the find command is the most

complex and flexible search tool among

the three mastering its syntax can

sometimes be tricky but its capabilities

go well beyond a normal file search as a

basic example let's perform a recursive

search starting from the root filesystem

directory and look for any file that

starts with the letters s BD

the main advantage of find over locate

is that it can search for files and

directories by more than just the name

with find we can search by file age size

owner file type

I'm stamping xand more

managing Kali Linux services Kali Linux

is a specialized Linux distribution

aimed at security professionals and

contains several non-standard features

the default Kali installation ships with

several services pre-installed such as

SSH HTTP and MySQL to maintain a low

profile Kali prevents network services

from starting by default unless we

explicitly enable them

SSH service the secure shell service is

most commonly used to remotely access a

computer using a secure encrypted

protocol the SSH service is TCP based

and listens by default on port 22 to

start the SSH service run systemctl with

the start option followed by the service

name in this case SSH

when the command completes successfully

it doesn't return any output but we can

verify that the SSH service is running

and listening on TCP port 22 by issuing

the SS command and piping the output

into grep to search the output for sshd

to start the SSH service automatically

at boot time after changing the default

Cali password we pass systemctl the

enable parameter

we can use systemctl to enable and

disable most services within Kali Linux

HTTP service the apache HTTP service is

often used during a penetration test

either for hosting a site or providing a

platform for downloading files to a

victim machine the HTTP service is TCP

based and listens by default on port 80

to start the HTTP service in Kali we can

use systemctl as we did when starting

the SSH service replacing the service

name with apache 2 as with the SSH

service we can verify that the HTTP

service is running and listening on TCP

port 80 with SS and grep to have the

HTTP service start at boot time much

like with the SSH service we need to

explicitly enable it with systemctl and

it's enable option most services and

Kali Linux are operated in much the same

way as SSH and HTTP through their

service or init scripts to see a table

of all available services run systemctl

with the list unit files option

for additional information regarding

service management in Kali Linux

including the use of systemctl refer to

the Kali training site

searching installing and removing tools

the default Cali release contains the

most common tools used in the field of

penetration testing however it's not

practical to include every single tool

present in the Cali repository in the

default release in this section we'll be

exploring the advanced package tool

toolset as well as other commands to

search for install or remove tools apt

is a set of tools that helps manage

packages or applications on a Debian

based system since Cali is based on

Debian we can use apt to install and

remove applications update packages and

even upgrade the entire system the magic

of apt lies in the fact that it is a

complete package management system that

installs or removes the requested

package by recursively satisfying its

requirements and dependencies

apt update information regarding apt

packages is cached locally to speed up

any operation that queries the apt

database it's good practice to update

the list of available packages including

information related to their versions

descriptions etc each time we perform an

apt operation we can do this with the

apt update command as follows

apt upgrade after updating the apt

database we can upgrade the installed

packages and course system to the latest

versions using the apt upgrade command

in order to upgrade a single package

supply the package name as an option to

the apt upgrade command

while you can fully upgrade your Kali

Linux installation at any time it's a

good idea to take a snapshot of the

virtual machine in a clean state before

doing so this gives you the ability to

rollback the VM if the upgrade causes

unexpected results

search an apt show the apt cache search

command displays much of the information

stored in the internal cached package

database for example let's say we'd like

to install the pure FT PD application

the first thing we have to do is to find

out whether or not the application is

present in the kali linux repositories

to do this we simply provide the search

term to apt cache search the output

reveals that the application is in fact

present in the Kali repository there are

also a few authentication extensions for

the pure FTP application that we could

install if needed

interestingly enough the resource agents

package is showing up in our search even

though its name does not contain the

pure FTP D keyword this is because apt

cache search looks for the requested

keyword in the packages description

rather than in the package name itself

to confirm that the resource agents

package description really contains the

pure FTP D keyword pass the package name

to apt show

the output reveals why the resource

agents application was mysteriously

showing up in the previous search for

pure FTP D

apt install we can use the apt install

command to add a package to the system

let's continue with the installation of

pure FTP D

you

apt remove - - purge the apt remove - -

purge command completely removes

packages from Kali it's important to

note that removing a package with a PT

remove removes all package data but

leaves user configuration files behind

adding the purge option removes all the

leftovers including configuration files

good you're now able to search install

and remove tools in Kali Linux with apt

let's explore one last command in this

module

dpkg dpkg

is the core tool used to install a

package either directly or indirectly

through apt it is also the preferred

tool to use when operating offline since

it does not require an internet

connection

note that dpkg will not install any

dependencies that the package might

require to install a package provide the

- I option and the path to the package

file

wrapping up in this module we set a

baseline for the upcoming modules we

explored tips and tricks for new users

and reviewed some standards that more

advanced users may appreciate all

students are encouraged to review the

free online training on the Kali

training site this site includes the

kali linux revealed book exercises

designed to test your understanding a

dedicated support forum and more these

free resources provide valuable insight

to users of all skill levels and serve

as an excellent companion to the

training presented in this course