And why do we use Kali for hacking?

Kali Linux is a distribution designed for ethical hacking, coming with around 600 hacking tools pre-installed, such as Nmap, Hydra, John the Ripper. It is very useful for penetration testing and malware analysis.

Kali Linux is built on a customised version of the Debian Operating Kernel. Which prioritizes the application of security patches very quickly to make sure the system is resiliant to threats. One of the reasons Kali has to be so secure is root access is automatically granted on Kali. So if an attacker gains access to your machine, there’s nothing stopping them. The kernel is also modified often to improve performance. To understand why this is important we need to understand the architecture of Linux.

linux architecture

-As we can see the arcitecture of Linux is divided into two spaces, the user space and the kernel space. The user space doesn’t interact with the hardware directly, the kernel space is the part that connects both.

-GNU C library allows it to switch mechanisms from the user space to the kernel space

-Kernel space/system space is simply for interacting with the hardware programs like RAM and hard disks. The system call interface will make requests to the
kernel such as allocate or dellocate memory.

-the architecture dependant kernel code is what bridges the gap between the kernel and hardware and handles the boot sequence and initial loading of the kernel.

-user applications refers to the interface

legal use and ethical hacking

Kali is designed to be used for ethical hacking. What makes hacking ethical?

Ethical hacking is when we identify vulnerabilities on a system before adversaries do. We use kali to attack a system while authorised and see if we can gain access, if we can gain access the developers or owners know what they can do to patch those vulnerabilities so they arent exploited at any point.

Cyber threats are constantly evolving, hackers only have to be right once, cybersecurity teams have to be right everytime. Constantly running penetration tests against a system will result in better security and a robust system.

Essentially, malicious hackers exploit a system to cause harm and ethical hackers exploit a system to create better defenses.

how to install kali linux

First we need a VirtualBox manager for our machine. Downloads – Oracle VM VirtualBox download via the link.

and then we need to download our iso image for Kali Linux Get Kali | Kali Linux

Ok so once we have these, we are going to open up oracle VirtualBox. We are going to press the ‘new’ button. Where it says iso image we are going to select our kali linux iso image.