Penetration testing, also known as ethical hacking, involves assessing the security of computer systems, networks, or applications to identify vulnerabilities that malicious attackers could exploit. Here are some commonly used tools for penetration testing:
- Nmap: A powerful network scanning tool used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a “map” of the network’s topology.
- Metasploit: A framework for developing, testing, and executing exploit code against remote targets. It’s one of the most popular penetration testing tools and provides a wide range of exploits, payloads, and auxiliary modules.
- Wireshark: A network protocol analyzer that allows you to capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network in real-time.
- Burp Suite: A comprehensive platform for web application security testing. It includes tools for web vulnerability scanning, crawling, and exploitation.
- Nessus: A vulnerability scanner that identifies potential vulnerabilities in systems and networks by conducting scans and analyzing the results for security issues.
- Hydra: A fast and flexible password-cracking tool that supports various protocols, including HTTP, FTP, SSH, Telnet, and others.
- John the Ripper: A popular password-cracking tool that can be used to detect weak passwords by brute-forcing encrypted password hashes.
- Aircrack-ng: A set of tools for auditing wireless networks. It includes packet sniffing, password cracking, and various attacks against Wi-Fi networks.
- Sqlmap: An automated SQL injection and database takeover tool used to detect and exploit SQL injection vulnerabilities in web applications.
- ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy): An OWASP project that provides a suite of tools for testing web application security. It can be used to find security vulnerabilities during the development and testing phases of a web application.
- Hashcat: An advanced password recovery tool that supports various hashing algorithms and attack modes for cracking password hashes.
- DirBuster/DirB: A tool used for brute-forcing directories and files on web servers. It helps in discovering hidden or unlinked resources on a web application.