Whether you are looking to take your first steps into the world of ethical hacking, or if you are already a professional hacker, surely you know or have heard of Kali Linux. This is one of the best Linux for hacking that we can find, since, in addition to its excellent operation and maintenance, it has one of the largest collections of software included by default. Its managers usually release new versions of this suite four times a year. And to get off to a good start, just a few hours ago the new Kali Linux 2021.1 saw the light of day.
Kali Linux 2021.1 is the first update of this ethical hacking suite of this 2021. This new distro comes precisely to mark the path that development will take throughout this year, and although it does not bring great revolutionary news, it is a Important update, as it greatly simplifies the way of working with it, especially for less experienced users.
Next, we are going to see all the news that this new version has released since the launch of the previous 2020.4.
What’s new in Kali Linux 2021.1
The first thing we find is that the two main desktops of this ethical hacking system have been updated to their most recent versions. On the one hand we find the new Xfce 4.16. This is the default desktop, and the one recommended by the Kali developers themselves. The new version fixes bugs and greatly optimizes its operation. And on the other hand we will find KDE 5.20, a major update, very inspired by Windows 10, for those who want a more beautiful and customizable environment.
Using Kali Linux involves using the terminal . Most advanced tools do not have a GUI, so they have to be controlled by commands. This distro brings its own console that allows us to work with it without problems, but users who are used to working with others may feel uncomfortable. For this reason, this new version includes the main Linux terminals, so that we can choose which one we want to use: xfce4-terminal, tmux, tilix, konsole, qterminal, and mate-terminal.
But, without a doubt, the best novelty we can find is Command-Not-Found. Until now, when we tried to execute an incorrect command, or open a program that was not installed, we saw a message that indicated “Command-Not-Found” , and it was finished. From now on, thanks to this new tool, Kali Linux will recommend us to install the program if we do not have it installed, or it will recommend an alternative command in case we have been confused when writing it.
This new version 2021.1 also releases a series of new tools:
- Airgeddon – software for auditing wireless networks.
- AltDNS – Tool for generating subdomain alterations and mutations and then attempting to resolve them.
- Arjun: hacking suite for HTTP parameter discovery.
- Chisel – A very fast TCP / UDP tunnel that works over HTTP.
- DNSGen – Lets you generate a combination of domain names from a provided input.
- DumpsterDiver: helps us find secrets and hidden information in different types of files.
- GetAllUrls – Get known URLs from Open Threat Exchange, Wayback Machine, and Common Crawl
- GitLeaks: tool to find secrets and keys in Git.
- HTTProbe: it returns a list of domains and allows us to test that the HTTP and HTTPS servers are up and running.
- MassDNS – A high-performance DNS for mass search and reconnaissance.
- PSKracker – WPA / WPS toolkit for generating default keys.
- WordlistRaider: software for preparing lists of existing words.
Lastly, Kali NetHunter (mobile version) has also received some changes to improve its performance, and Kali ARM adds preliminary support for Apple Silicon (Apple M1) and Raspberry Pi 400 (with WiFi).
Download or update the hacking suite
This first version of 2021 of Kali Linux is now available to all those “hacker” interested in it, completely free of charge. If we still do not have this distro installed on the PC, we can download the ISO of the latest version from the following link .
If we are already using Kali, we can update to the latest version by executing the following commands in one of the terminals:
echo "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade [-f / var / ejecutar / reboot-required] && sudo reboot -f
When finished, we can execute the command “grep VERSION / etc / os-release” to verify that, indeed, we already have this new version of Kali installed.
