Hackers are the experts who use their skills and knowledge to intrude into the mainframe systems of people. They exploit weaknesses or using bugs, and collect information or steal data. For example, hackers can create algorithms to crack passwords, penetrate networks or disrupt network services.

The aim is to investigate the system or network for weak points that malicious hackers can exploit. They try to improve the security footprint to withstand attacks better or divert them. For this purpose, hackers use numerous tools and software to collect and analyze the information to figure out ways to strengthen the security of the system or network or applications. The realm of penetration testing has witnessed a major change with the advent of automated tools. 

What are Ethical Hacking Tools and Software?

Hacking is generally understood as a process of using various types of tools or technology in the form of computer programs and scripts to get access to unauthorized data for the security measures of a computer system or network. 

Hacking tools and software are computer programs or a complex type of script designed by the developers, to be used by the hackers to know the loopholes in computer OS, various web applications as well as servers and networks. This trend can be observed in banking sectors, where many employees use ethical hacking tools to secure their data from attackers.

Hacking tools are available either in open source form (freeware or shareware) or in commercial solutions. You can download such tools from the browser especially if you want to use them for malicious purposes. Security professionals use hacking tools such as packet sniffers to intercept network traffic, password crackers to discover the passwords, port scanners to identify open ports on computers. Some of the most famous hacking tools used  are Nmap (Network Mapper), Wireshark, Metasploit, Burp Suite, John the Ripper, Aircrack-ng, etc.

Importance of Hacking Software

As a general thought, we consider hacking software to be harmful for our systems. We often get anxious about it, that they may damage our computer systems. But, in reality, we need the help of experts to protect the important data containing valuable assets of companies, hardware, and software systems from malicious attackers. Here comes the need to use ethical hacking tools in ethical hacking.

Features of ethical hacking tools and software:

• It is used to test the network security by discovering vulnerabilities in it and fixing them.
• It provides inside and outside security from threats to end users.
• You can use ethical hacking software for your home network security from the open sources and secure it from attackers.
• It is used to audit the security of the company by assuring that the computer system is running smoothly with no issues.

Best Ethical Hacking Tools and Software

1. Nmap (Network Mapper)

This tool is used in port scanning, in the phrase of ethical hacking. It is the finest hacking tool ever. It was initially a command-line tool, but later it was developed for operating systems based on Linux or Unix and Windows versions.

It is basically a network security mapper which can discover services and hosts on a network by creating a network map. This tool facilitates many other services that help in probing computer networks, host discovery and detect operating systems. It is based on script extensible, that provides advanced vulnerability detection and can adapt to network conditions like congestion and latency while scanning.

Features of Nmap:

• Offers binary packages for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
• Contains a data transfer, redirection and debugging tool
• Results and GUI viewer

2. Metasploit

Metasploit is the most powerful exploit tool. It is an open- source software and Metasploit Pro is a commercial offering, with a trial period of 14 days. This tool is geared to do penetration testing, and ethical hackers can develop and execute exploit codes against remote targets. 

As an ethical hacker, you will be using “Kali Distribution” which has the Metasploit community version embedded in it along with other ethical hacking tools. In systems like Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, you can easily install it as a separate tool. Metasploit can be used either with command prompt or with Web UI. You need the following hardware requirements to install Metasploit:

• 2 GHz+ processor
• 1 GB RAM available
• 1 GB+ available disk space

Features of Metasploit:

• Suitable for finding security vulnerabilities
• Cross-platform support
• Best for creating evasion and anti-forensic tools

3. Wireshark

Wireshark is an efficient and valuable hacking software for analyzing data packets and can also perform deep inspections of a large number of established protocols. You can export analysis results to many other file formats like CSV, PortScript, Plaintext and XML. Ethical hackers can use Wireshark to examine network traffic, capture packets and analyze data flowing through the network. Following are some uses of the hacking tool:

• Wireshark allows ethical hackers to inspect individual packets of data passing through a network, providing a glimpse into the communication between systems.
• Ethical hackers use this tool to detect suspicious or malicious traffic on a network, which helps to identify potential security breaches or unauthorized activities.
• Wireshark helps the ethical hackers to diagnose network issues, identify errors, and pinpoint the source of problems in a network infrastructure.
• By analyzing network traffic, ethical hackers can identify potential vulnerabilities in network configurations, protocols or applications, which can be exploited by the attackers.
• Wireshark can be used to check and capture network traffic during malware infections, helping ethical hackers to analyze the behavior and communication patterns of the malicious software.
• These tools help to capture and analyze login sessions, helping ethical hackers to identify plaintext passwords or weak authentication mechanisms.

4. BurpSuite

BurpSuite is a set of tools used for penetration testing of web applications. It is developed by the company named Portswigger, which is the alias of its founder Dafydd Stuttard. It is a popular tool among professional web application security researchers and bug bounty hunters. This is a security-testing tool which comes in three price tiers: Community edition (free), Professional edition (starting at $3999 per user/per year), and Enterprise edition (starting at $3999/year). It is different from a web vulnerability scanner.

The tools offered by BurpSuite are:

• Spider: It is a web crawler, used to map the target web application. The aim of the mapping is to get a list of endpoints so that their functionality can be observed and potential vulnerabilities can be discovered. 
• Proxy: BurpSuite consists of an intercepting proxy that helps you to see and modify the contents of requests and responses while they are in transit. It also allows the user to send the request/ response under monitoring to another relevant tool in BurpSuite, thus removing the burden of copy-paste.
• Intruder: This is used to run a set of values through an input point. The values are run and the output is observed for success/failure and content length. Generally, an anomaly results in a change in response code or content length of the response. BurpSuite allows brute-force, dictionary file and single values for its payload position.
• Repeater: It lets you send requests repeatedly with manual modifications. It is used to verify whether the user-supplied values are being verified.
• Sequencer: The sequencer is an entropy checker which checks for the randomness of tokens generated by the webserver. These tokens are used for authentication in sensitive operations: cookies and anti-CSRF tokens.
• Decoder: It lists the common encoding methods like URL, HTML, Base64, Hex, etc. This tool comes handy when looking for chunks of data in values of parameters or headers. This is used for payload construction for various vulnerability classes.
• Extender: BurpSuite supports external components to be integrated into the tools suite to improve its capabilities. These external components are called BApps. They work just like browser extensions.
• Scanner: Scanner is not available in the community edition. It scans the website automatically for  many common vulnerabilities and lists them with information on confidence over each finding and their complexity of exploitation. 

5. John the Ripper

It is a free tool suitable for password cracking. It was created to detect weak UNIX passwords, and can be used on DOS, Windows, and OpenVMS. If you are a pen-tester, cracking passwords is done by you on a daily basis. This can include login passwords, file passwords and everything that is protected using password. This supports many encryption technologies for Windows and Unix systems. It can auto detect the encryption for common formats. This helps to save time on researching the hash formats and finding the correct tool to crack them.

It is a dictionary-based tool that works with a dictionary of common passwords to compare it with hash in hand. John has its own set of wordlists with thousands of common passwords. This makes it very effective when cracking systems with weak passwords.

Features of John the Ripper:

• Offers a customizable cracker and numerous different password crackers in one bundle.
• Tests various encrypted passwords
• Performs dictionary attacks

6. Aircrack-Ng

The use of Wireless networks is increasing and it is becoming important to keep Wi-Fi secure. This tool offers ethical hackers an array of command-line tools that check and evaluate Wi-Fi network security. It is dedicated to activities such as attacking, monitoring, testing, and cracking. It is a comprehensive suite of tools designed for auditing and securing Wi-Fi networks. The main aim of this tool is to test the security of wireless networks by cracking WEP and WPA keys by creating fake access points, capturing and analyzing network traffic, and performing various other network-based attacks.

Features of Aircrack-Ng:

• Can crack WEP keys and WPA2-PSK, and check Wi-Fi cards
• Supports exporting data to text files
• Supports multiple platforms

Conclusion

The threats of internet security is growing and with this employers are demanding skilled and certified ethical hackers, to prevent fraudulent crimes and identity thefts. The targets are always the end-users, which the cybercriminals crack even having highly sophisticated defenses. We have acknowledged several businesses facing major security breaches. Ethical hacking tools help the businesses to identify possible shortcomings in internet security and prevent data breaches.

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