Today I am going to do a quick demonstration of how to easily install a suite of security testing tools from Kali Linux onto a Ubuntu machine. For a bit of background information, Kali Linux is a distribution derived from Debian.
Its sole purpose is to provide a suite of tools for penetration testing (pentesting) and forensics. It is provided by Offensive Security, an organization dedicated to providing security training. There is a very long list of tools available for Kali. Such tools include (but are not limited to) forensics, vulnerability checks, access checks, and stress testing.
REMEMBER: Such tools are meant to test the security of a system to find vulnerabilities in the security. Needless to say, they shouldn’t be used for malicious purposes.
Let’s Begin
To make things easier, there is already a python script out there on GitHub called katoolin. It is a terminal-based program that provides an interactive menu that lets the user decide which tools to install. All of the tools can be installed if desired. Don’t forget to make sure that python (2.7) is installed on your system first. You can download this script via its page on GitHub, or (if you have git installed) run ‘git clone’ to clone the repository via the command-line. $ git clone https://github.com/LionSec/katoolin The following screenshot was how I installed the script so that it can be used system-wide.
I simply made the script executable with ‘chmod +x katoolin.py’, and copied the script into the ‘/usr/bin’ directory. That way, I can run the script from anywhere with root privileges using ‘sudo’. It requires root privileges because it will use apt to install most of the software. $ sudo katoolin This script will bring up a list of options of what to do next.
When I first ran the program, I greeted with the main menu where you can manage repositories, view categories, get help, etc. Entering ‘2’ brings up a list of categories to browse through to choose which tools you wish to install.
Entering ‘5’ will list two commands to use for navigation: ‘back’ and ‘home. Enter ‘back’ to go to the previous menu and ‘gohome’ for the main menu.
Also, when launching the program, it stresses that any Kali repositories that may have been added be removed before updating the system. Katoolin will either use apt to install any programs selected. Some require git as the sources are downloaded. Git will automatically be installed if it isn’t already via apt. Some programs listed do come from the official Ubuntu repositories. However, not all of them do. If you try to install a program like ‘wordlist’ under password attacks, you will get this from apt:
This is because it doesn’t exist in the Ubuntu repositories.
Installing Programs
So, before doing anything with this script, it is recommended that you add the Kali repositories to the sources list. Katoolin already provides an interface to do this in two easy steps. First, enter ‘1’ into the prompt to add the repositories, then enter ‘2’ to update the package list for apt.
Once the software list has been updated, we will then proceed to install ‘wordlists’ again.
If you really want to install all of the programs available either in a single category or from all of them, you can enter 0 in the appropriate menu. See the above screenshots.
Categories
If we go through just some of the categories in the menu we can see that there a numerous tools available for Kali Linux that we can download and install onto our Ubuntu machine. Let’s go through a few of them.
Entering ’11’ in the categories menu will bring up a list of tools for password attacking. Here I am about to install John the Ripper. This is a program that attempts to crack the passwords of the users on your system. The more insecure the password, the quicker it will be cracked.
See there are numerous programs available under the Vulnerability analysis tools. You may find that some programs are listed under more than one category.
Finishing Up
Once you have finished installing the programs you want, you should remove the Kali repositories from the sources list. Do this to prevent major errors when updating the system. In the start menu, go to the “Add Kali Linux repositories & Update” menu (1), remove the Kali repos (3), and update the package list (2).
Using this script makes installing these security tools on Ubuntu much easier. Anything can be installed using one central interface. A few programs can be installed, or all of them can be installed, depending on what you want to do.