- Top 6 Social Engineering Tools for Kali Linux
- What is Social Engineering?
- Best Social Engineering Tools
- Wifiphisher
- Features
- Metasploit Framework
- Features
- MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC)
- Features
- Social Engineering Toolkit (SET)
- Features
- Maltego
- Features
- Nikto
- Features
- Final Words
- Tags
- Recent Posts
- Kali Linux: Top 5 tools for social engineering
- Social engineering pentesting with Kali Linux
- Kali Linux social engineering tool: Maltego
- Kali Linux social engineering tool: Social Engineering Toolkit (SET)
- Kali Linux social engineering tool: Wifiphisher
- Kali Linux social engineering tool: Metasploit MSF
- Kali Linux social engineering tool: MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC)
- Utilize Kali Linux tools for social engineering defense
- Sources
Top 6 Social Engineering Tools for Kali Linux
Today, cybercriminals use different tactics to carry out a cyber-attack. Social engineering is one of them. It is one of the most common techniques that can trick people into revealing their personal information over the internet. Almost “90% of data breaches have a social engineering component to them”. To prevent employees from falling prey to such attacks, organizations must educate them. Also, they can use different tools to test social engineering against their employees within the organization.
Here in this article, we will talk about top Kali Linux tools that can help you perform social engineering pen-testing and identify weak points within the company.
What is Social Engineering?
Social Engineering is a technique used to manipulate people and make them share their sensitive information, including credentials, over the internet. The attacker pretends to be a legitimate person or from a reputable company. “An average organization is targeted by over 700 social engineering attacks each year”. The most common social engineering types include phishing attacks, spear phishing, tailgating, baiting, and pretexting.
Best Social Engineering Tools
You can use these social engineering tools to test your employees and determine the number of people likely to become victims of a social engineering attack. The top social engineering tools for kali Linux include;
Wifiphisher
Wifiphisher is a social engineering tool used by ethical hackers or pen-testers to perform automated phishing attacks against a wifi network. It allows them to get passphrases or user credentials. Unlike other social engineering methods, Wifiphisher doesn’t indulge in brute forcing to attack wifi networks. Instead, it performs victim-customized phishing attacks to obtain credentials of the connected clients or to infect their network with malware.
Features
- It is a powerful and flexible tool.
- This rogue Access Point framework can run for hours and contains phishing templates for several different scenarios.
- It is easy to use and offers rich features for advanced users. Beginners can use the simpler version.
- Free download and a complete source code is available that users may study, change or distribute.
- It incorporates advanced attacks, including Known Beacons, Lure10, and exclusive phishing attacks.
- It consists of an Interactive Textual User Interface for the ease of its users.
Metasploit Framework
Metasploit framework, also known as MSF, is a Ruby-based tool that ethical hackers or pen-testers can use to develop, test, and execute attacks against a remote host. It is one of the most used penetration testing frameworks, updated regularly for new exploits, and can be used in vulnerability testing systems. The Metasploit framework consists of all the security tools for penetration testing, in addition to msfconsole (a powerful terminal-based console) to help you find targets, exploit vulnerabilities, and collect all available valuable data.
Features
- MSF is open source and free to use and distribute.
- Developers can choose their licensing terms.
- It provides legal support for MSF contributors.
- It can scan remote targets and enumerate networks.
MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC)
MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC) is a user-friendly tool for Kali Linux that helps users generate basic payloads even with a minimum of one argument. It allows you to generate one of each payloads using a loop. Its batch feature enables you to mass-create payloads. Moreover, it is an automatic tool to help you generate multiple types of payloads as simply as possible. You have to define the payload you need, either by using the file extension or the platform you are dropping it on.
Features
- It is packaged in Kali Rolling.
- It can discover your external IP.
- It can not bypass antivirus solutions at any point.
Social Engineering Toolkit (SET)
As the name suggests, Social Engineering Toolkit (SET) is a social engineering tool used to execute attacks like phishing, vishing, etc. This open-source and free tool comes with Kali Linux, or you can download it from Github. A programmer Dave Kennedy designed this toolkit for security researchers and penetration testers to look for vulnerabilities within an organization. Different attacking techniques are performed on machines using SET to clone any website or conduct phishing attacks.
Features
- You can launch different attacks using SET, including Wifi AP-based attacks, SMS or email attacks, web-based attacks, and the creation of payloads.
- It is portable, allowing you to switch attack vectors quickly.
- It is a multi-platform tool.
- Using the Social Engineering Toolkit, you can also access the Fast-Track Penetration Testing platform.
Maltego
Maltego is a Kali Linux social engineering tool that can display connections between people and several information assets, such as social profiles, email addresses, screen names, or any information through which a person is linked to a service or organization. It is an Open-source Intelligence investigation tool (OSINT) to help you execute social engineering attacks so that organizations can evaluate their employees’ cybersecurity awareness.
Features
- It gives insight into the threats available in an organization’s environment.
- It uses Java and a graphical user interface to make it easy for users to see relationships.
- Its powerful search utility enables you to discover hidden information.
Nikto
Nikto is a social engineering tool that allows ethical hackers and pen testers to execute a web server scan to identify security gaps in the system. It works by collecting results through default file names, app patterns, and software misconfigurations. Moreover, it is written in Perl and complements OpenVAS and several other vulnerability scanners.
Features
- It can scan multiple ports.
- It can output results into TXT, XML, HTML, CSV, or NBE.
- It can identify installed software via files, headers, and favicons.
Final Words
While we advance toward technology and digitization, hackers also use the latest techniques and tools to execute cyber-attacks. Modernized systems and technologies demand more excellent knowledge about cybersecurity. These tools play a vital role in helping organizations identify security vulnerabilities in their systems. Social engineering tools can evaluate your staff’s responsiveness to social engineering attacks. However, these tools are not available for illegal use. In the event of any incident, the developers and sponsors will not be responsible.
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Kali Linux: Top 5 tools for social engineering
Social engineering is the art of tricking people and making them share sensitive information voluntarily. It uses psychological manipulation to play with people’s trust so that they give up information like passwords, bank details and even their system’s credentials without suspicion. The most common attack vectors using social engineering are malicious emails and fake websites that solicit personal information by posing legitimate channels from a real organization.
As a security expert, how can you test social engineering against the human element within your organization? One solution is pentesting via Kali Linux. You can utilize the various tools within the Kali Linux OS to identify weaknesses in your security training, group of employees or processes. This article will break down some of the best Kali Linux tools available for social engineering pentesting.
Social engineering pentesting with Kali Linux
If you’re looking to evaluate your staff’s susceptibility to social engineering attacks, you might need to use different types of tools. Kali has several tools that will help you with this task. Here is the list of some of the best ones and what they’re specifically used for:
Kali Linux social engineering tool: Maltego
Maltego is an OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigation tool that shows how different pieces of information are interlinked. With Maltego, you can find relationships between people and various information assets, including email addresses, social profiles, screen names and other pieces of information that link a person to a service or organization.
Having all of this information can help you simulate a social engineering attack to help you evaluate your employees’ security awareness. You can launch Maltego from the Kali Whisker Menu or by going to Applications > Kali Linux > Top 10 Security Tools > and selecting Maltego at number five.
Maltego uses a graphic user interface, making it easy to visualize relationships.
Kali Linux social engineering tool: Social Engineering Toolkit (SET)
Social Engineering Toolkit (or SET) is an open-source, Python-driven toolkit aimed at penetration testing around social engineering. SET has various custom attack vectors that enable you to set up a believable attack in no time.
SET includes a website tool that converts your Kali box into a web server with a range of exploits that can compromise most browsers. The idea is to send your target a link that routes them through your site, which automatically downloads and executes the exploit on their system.
You can even use the pre-built templates in SET to clone a legitimate website so that the exploit looks more realistic. SET has pre-formatted phishing pages of popular sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo.
You can open SET in Kali Linux by going to Applications > KaliLinux > Exploitation Tools > Social Engineering Toolkit | toolkit or by entering setoolkit as a shell prompt.
Kali Linux social engineering tool: Wifiphisher
Wifiphisher is a unique social engineering tool that automates phishing attacks on Wi-Fi networks to get the WPA/WPA2 passwords of a target user base. The tool can choose any nearby Wi-Fi access point, jam it (de-authenticate all users) and create a clone access point that doesn’t require a password to join.
Any person who connects to the evil twin-like open network is presented with a seemingly legitimate phishing page asking for the Wi-Fi password to download a firmware update, which is cited as the reason the Wi-Fi isn’t working.
Once the targets enter a password, Wifiphisher sends an alert while stalling for time. After transmitting the captured password, it will display both a fake reboot timer and a fake update screen to buy you time for testing the captured password. It’s a handy tool for evaluating your security defenses against Wi-Fi-based social engineering.
You can launch the python script by entering this command:
$ sudo python wifiphisher.py
Kali Linux social engineering tool: Metasploit MSF
Metasploit Framework is a penetration testing tool that can help you identify, exploit and validate vulnerabilities. It delivers the content, tools and infrastructure to conduct extensive security auditing along with penetration testing.
One of the most powerful features packaged into Metasploit is the option to set up a fake SMB server. This implies that when a person on the network tries to access the server, their system will have to show their credentials in terms of their “domain password hash.”
If you are patient, you may be able to capture domain credentials as users attempt to authenticate against the SMB server. Sending an embedded UNC path to the target can help you collect their domain credentials when they click on it.
MSF is updated frequently, and new exploits are updated as soon as their creators publish them. You can launch Metasploit through the Kali Linux menu or by entering the following command in the terminal.
$ msfconsole -h
Kali Linux social engineering tool: MSFvenom Payload Creator (MSFPC)
MSFPC is a user-friendly tool that makes it easy to create basic payloads. It helps users avoid the need to write long msfvenom commands to generate payloads. With this generator, you can create payloads with a minimum of one argument.
MSFPC can be used to create Windows, Linux and even Android payloads. Its script is a real timesaver when you want to create simple payloads quickly. Although this doesn’t involve encoding to help bypass antivirus virus, it can still be useful to learn.
Sometimes, you just want to make a quick payload, deliver it somewhere, and carry on with your routine. In scenarios like these, msfpc.sh can come in handy.
To use MSFPC, you must only define the payload you want by either the file extension you want it to have or the platform you are going to drop it on. Typing msfpc in the terminal will allow you to run the tool.
Utilize Kali Linux tools for social engineering defense
As you can see, Kali Linux is stocked with tools that can help you conduct social engineering penetration testing. With the help of these offerings, you can evaluate your firm’s security posture and arm personnel with the knowledge they need to avoid these threats. It’s time to close security gaps and improve your defenses against social engineering.