Because hacking can sometimes be illegal and even malicious, ethical hacking refers to the practice of testing computer networks and software without any malicious intent. If you’re an ethical hacker, you use your knowledge of security vulnerabilities to protect organizations from real threats instead of exploiting them to steal data or money. Use these top 10 most popular ethical hacking tools to secure your systems and make sure you’re well-prepared in case the bad guys get in anyway! [List the top 10 most popular ethical hacking tools].
1) Nmap
Nmap (network mapper) is a security scanner that can be used to discover computers and services on a computer network, thus creating a map of the network. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on a network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks — for instance many thousands of machines for particular service vulnerabilities. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and both console and graphical versions are available.
2) Wireshark
Wireshark is one of the most popular ethical hacking tools because it is a free packet sniffer that can capture packets on any network and interactively browse through those packets. Wireshark has an open-source GUI which makes it user-friendly and easy to use, even for beginners. Some features include deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, live capture and offline analysis, dozens of rich displays filtering capabilities, remote (wired/wireless) protocol decodes and many more. . . . For example, if you're trying to troubleshoot a networking issue at your office or at home (maybe you've discovered some odd traffic on your laptop's wireless card), then Wireshark can help you figure out what's going on.
3) Metasploit
This is one of my favorite tools. AirCrack-NG allows you to audit wireless networks by capturing packets and extracting encrypted WEP/WPA passwords. It runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X. You can also use it for WiFi auditing. It’s not limited to cracking 802.11 though – it can crack other protocols as well including Bluetooth and even wired Ethernet where applicable.
4) Ettercap
Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on-the-fly and many other interesting tricks. This tool allows for instance to save HTML pages with embedded images and other resources from unencrypted HTTP connections, to take over firewall privileges or to fake DNS replies (and thus redirect network traffic). Its filtering capabilities make it interesting too as an IDS/IPS or as an scanner.
5) Aircrack-ng
Aircrack-ng is an 802.11 WEP and WPA-PSK keys cracking program that can recover keys once enough data packets have been captured. It implements the standard FMS attack along with some optimizations like KoreK attacks, thus making the attack much faster compared to other WEP cracking tools. Aicrack-ng suite also includes other tools like airsnort for wireless packet capturing and injection, aireplay-ng for packet injection, etc. The popular Linux distribution BackTrack has all these tools in one place under its Kali GNU/Linux distribution that comes preloaded with many different hacking tools.
6) Burp Suite
XSSniper is an automated tool for finding XSS vulnerabilities in web applications. You can use it for free to test your own application or you can run scans against other websites. Its scan engine covers all five categories of XSS: Reflected, Stored, DOM-based, CRLF and Misconfigured HTTP Header. It also checks if cookies are properly set up to prevent session hijacking attacks.
7) OpenVAS
The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools offering a vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. It supports multiple operating systems, including Linux, Windows, BSD, etc. It contains exploits, or attack modules that are used to scan remote hosts and also an integrated webserver interface that allows to upload and run custom plugins. Plugins can be written in either C or Python. Some common uses of OpenVAS are network security monitoring, vulnerability assessment/management for compliance checks (PCI DSS), corporate network security assessments and others where a more extensive vulnerability scanner is required than those usually included in security applications (such as Nessus).
8) Canvas Exploitation Framework (CEF)
The Canvas Exploitation Framework (CEF) is a tool for performing automated browser security assessments. It was developed by MWR InfoSecurity in 2014 and is maintained by Adam Chester, Will Vandevanter, and other contributors. CEF provides a modular set of tools that can be used during an assessment to enumerate attack surfaces, collect evidence, and perform exploits. The project currently offers modules that are useful in assessing: Android (via WebView), Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1, Java SE 7 & 8 on Windows (including JRE auto-update functionality), Adobe Flash Player via Pepper API on Windows & Mac OS X 10.10+ (Youtube app included).
9) XSSniper Toolkit
XSSniper is a toolkit which automates XSS vulnerability detection and exploitation process. It’s written in Python language, it uses BurpSuite for payload delivery, and has a very interesting modular architecture. As any other automated scanner it uses BrowserMob proxy cloud infrastructure to do requests in parallel, trying to speed up scanning process as much as possible. You can use XSSniper with BurpSuite or OWASP ZAP proxy. Toolkit is under active development; new modules are added all time (like webshells upload/download function).
10) Maltego CE
Maltego CE is an open source intelligence and forensics application. It provides information about networks, computers, people, and more at a high speed data mining pace. Maltego can be used for offensive purposes such as profiling and performing social engineering attacks. But it can also be used defensively to aid in computer network defense by analyzing penetration test results. As a result of its versatility, use of Maltego has grown within many computer security groups to include intrusion analysts, digital forensics investigators, incident handlers and counterintelligence specialists. Use Maltego as part of your ethical hacking arsenal to assess network weaknesses or during forensic analysis after an attack has occurred.