Kali Linux
Kali Linux is a freely available security Linux distribution designed especially for penetration testing and digital forensics. Kali Linux comes preinstalled with well over 200 security tools and can be booted from a live CD, live USB drive or virtual machine. Why am I mentioning Kali Linux? Kali happens to come preinstalled with all of the computer based tools we are covering here as well as the tools mentioned in the previous chapter. Since social engineering testing is sometimes teamed together with red team testing, Kali makes a great one-stop shop Linux distro.
Kali Linux 1.0 is based on a derivative of Debian Wheezy. So, Debian fans will certainly enjoy the co-mingling of the two. I certainly do!
Screenshot of Kali Linux and the menu of preinstalled tools
Kali is the official successor of the former BackTrack security distribution. In fact, the very same group, Offensive Security, maintains it. The evolution of BackTrack, now retired, to Kali has been in the making for several years. As a security distribution overall, Kali Linux is the premiere security distribution and I recommend it for social engineering purposes. As an aside, I have been using BackTrack since its beta debut in 2006 and personally recommend its use as an all purpose Linux distribution as well.
