Common tools used by security professionals.

Now that we’ve learned the language of security professionals, it’s time to familiarize ourselves with the tools of trade. We’re going to take a look at some of the popular tools used by security professionals.

The tricks of the trade

Metasploit

Metasploit is an framework which is used for the hacking of different kinds of applications,operating systems,web applications etc., Metasploit contains various exploits, payloads,modules etc. Metasploit Framework is especially used by many of the hackers to generate payloads and attack the systems. As Metasploit is an open source where any one can use it. This framework supports different operating systems like windows, linux ,mac os x etc., Metasploit is preloaded in the Backtrack linux as there is no need for the backtrack users to install the metasploit again and again. IMHO, Metasploit is the single most powerful and useful tool for a wide variety of hacks. Personally, I like it so much I put it before the list of common tools. Remember this name: “Metasploit”. Below are a few more extremely helpful and common tools, sure to be found in any hacker’s computer.

Nmap

Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the 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.

Wireshark

Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

Nikto2

Nikto is an Open Source (GPL) web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 6400 potentially dangerous files/CGIs, checks for outdated versions of over 1200 servers, and version specific problems on over 270 servers. It also checks for server configuration items such as the presence of multiple index files, HTTP server options, and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software.

John the Ripper

John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix, Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypt(3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix systems, supported out of the box are Windows LM hashes, plus lots of other hashes and ciphers in the community-enhanced version.

Ettercap:

Ettercap is a comprehensive suite for man in the middle attacks. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols and includes many features for network and host analysis.

Ncat

Ncat is a feature-packed networking utility which reads and writes data across networks from the command line. Ncat was written for the Nmap Project as a much-improved reimplementation of the venerable Netcat. It uses both TCP and UDP for communication and is designed to be a reliable back-end tool to instantly provide network connectivity to other applications and users. Ncat will not only work with IPv4 and IPv6 but provides the user with a virtually limitless number of potential uses.

Kismet

Kismet is an 802.11 layer 2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and (with appropriate hardware) can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. Kismet also supports plugins which allow sniffing other media such as DECT.

w3af

w3af is a Web Application Attack and Audit Framework. The project’s goal is to create a framework to find and exploit web application vulnerabilities that is easy to use and extend.

hping

hping is a command-line oriented TCP/IP packet assembler/analyzer. The interface is inspired to the ping(8) unix command, but hping isn’t only able to send ICMP echo requests. It supports TCP, UDP, ICMP and RAW-IP protocols, has a traceroute mode, the ability to send files between a covered channel, and many other features.

Burpsuite

Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications. Its various tools work seamlessly together to support the entire testing process, from initial mapping and analysis of an application’s attack surface, through to finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities.

THC-Hydra

A very fast network logon cracker which support many different services.

SQLmap

SQLmap is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over of database servers. It comes with a powerful detection engine, many niche features for the ultimate penetration tester and a broad range of switches lasting from database fingerprinting, over data fetching from the database, to accessing the underlying file system and executing commands on the operating system via out-of-band connections.

WebScarab

WebScarab has a large amount of functionality, and as such can be quite intimidating to the new user. But, for the simplest case, intercepting and modifying requests and responses between a browser and HTTP/S server, there is not a lot that needs to be learned.

Author @Akhil Naidu
Source @Xeus