When OffSec Released 2020 versions of Kali I was pretty much excited about it, but once released and when i started using it, I had some mixed opinions, lets discuss about “the good, the bad and the future” of pen-testing with this release.
To give a bit of flash back I have been using this distro from a long time, when I started my career in hacking and pen-testing there was a legendary operating system called ‘Backtrack5 r3’, it was best in class pen-testing distribution at that time, there were r2 and r1 before that, and it was pretty much well established brand for pen-testing. Back then if you want to use a tool you need to give the entire path of that tool, it starts something like /pentest/etc/etc/etc, which is crazy now if I think. The reason I am telling this is after BT5R3 they released the first Kali Linux Operating system, with new interface new design and got rid of some tools, I took some time to get used to it. It was fun.
Now we are having the similar experience with new Kali 2020 release. Now to address the elephant in room, the removal of tools with no maintenance and python 2.x end of life, are the two things that hit hard and made it difficult to switch. And also, there are some teeny tiny things that I personally don’t enjoy in new Kali. Now this article is made to explain and give some perspective on the new releases. Let’s start.
Python 2.X end of life:
The big problem in the new Kali is a lot of tools that were depended on python 2.x might not work properly because the EOL of Python 2.X, the Kali 2020 release made sure their OS is up-to-date with everything so they did a huge work of getting rid of most of python 2.X tools.
Now the question is what should you do in this situation if you are the one who used a lot of python 2.X tools and now they are gone, to be honest, the rule of thumb in any situation is being up to date, you cannot rely on old tools to do pen-testing on new updated more secure targets of yours. Like they say “Improvise, adapt, overcome” is the key, first try to research and find another which can satisfy the same requirement as the current tool that you are using. And use it often so that you will understand and will start to appreciate it, of course over the period you will overcome that tool missing issue. More over python 3.X has a lot of interesting stuff under the hood, you might even like the new stuff more and it can have a lot of improvements over time unlike the older alternative that we got used to all these days. Give it a try at least you might end up liking it more than me.
Removing Some Tools:
This follows the same strategy as python 2.X, where there are apps with no updates and tricks, and there are better alternatives available, making them (OffSec) take this tough decision to remove the obsolete apps. Which is great, removing the clutter and cleaning it up to make it lighter and concise it the best way to go for any OS. By the way, though some tools might not come preinstalled in latest Kali but you can still install them with either APT or with dpkg or from source code, so virtually you are not missing anything you love and still getting refreshed OS with lots of improvements as well.
What’s not to like there.
Other Good Stuff:
From the latest Kali 2020 release, OffSec changed the way we install Kali as well, they have online installers, live images, offline installers etc, which makes it wide range of choices suitable for different kind of requirements, also with bunch of desktop environments to choose from, which not only give a little refreshing looks but also makes it little more personal and connected to the user whoever is using it. Also, you have full control to install the kind of tool-set that you want to install, in other words we control everything from looks to functionality, I’d say it’s pretty great.
There are a lot of things that I don’t enjoy as well, top two are mentioned above already, remaining are a bit too small to mention and also, I find other ways to make my experience better, one of them I will mention in another article with details.