Kro's Nest

The operating system is an integral part of cybersecurity. Each one offers different tools and functions catering to different people. In this article, I will review some of the differences and my experiences with the OSs I’ve used.

Kali

Based on Debian, link here.

Pros:

• Support for plenty of tools
• Support for plenty of WiFi adapters
• Most 3rd party scripts (like Airgeddon) have support for it
• Has a version for Android phones (Nethunter)
• Lots of documentation available

Cons:

• Nethunter has many issues (mostly caused by phone manufacturers)
• Not easy for beginners

Parrot

Based on Debian, link here.

Pros:

• Lots of tools available
• Support for plenty of WiFi adapters
• Most 3rd party scripts support it
• supported by Hack the Box (great for beginners and learners)
• Different versions depending on use case

Cons:

• Does not come with some important tools by default

Athena

Based on Arch, link here.

Pros:

• Access to the massive Blackarch repo (thousands of tools)
• Installs different tools based on chosen role
• Has Hack the Box integration
• Good looking UI

Cons:

• Not all scripts work with it
• May run slower on some computers due to UI
• New to the game (as of the writing of this article) so there may be more bugs

Experience

Kali

I installed Kali Linux on both my laptop and my phone. On my desktop, Kali performed well, running most of the tools flawlessly. I did have some issues getting one of my wifi adapters working as the driver was not available on the Kali repo. Apart from that, there were no other issues.

Nethunter on the other hand, was plagued with all sorts of issues. The first one was installing Nethunter. I used a 16gb Nexus 5x as the phone and I had already rooted and unlocked the bootloader. The problem was that Nethunter refused to install because I had 7gb left on my phone, less than the 8gb requirement. I had to modify a few things to force Nethunter to install without complaining (Also modified kernel to fix the Nexus 5x BLOD). Once Nethunter was installed, I was under the impression that it supported wireless injection. It took me 2 hours to find out that it’s only supported on some phones. Not only that, but when I tried to update, it installed all the packages in the full install (I ran the minimal version and this issue was fixed later) and my phone ran out of space. Of course, all of these problems could have been prevented if I had a newer phone, but Nethunter was touted as running best on Nexus devices.

Parrot

Overall Parrot had the least amount of issues. The installation was fast but I had to install a few missing tools. However, Parrot was also the only one to ask me for full disk encryption. I think this is something all the distros should ask. Just because you are a pentester doesn’t mean your security doesn’t matter. Parrot also shared the same issue with WiFi adapters as Kali but Parrot happened to have a package for it so it gets one more point.

Athena

Athena looks amazing (don’t take that out of context) and the UI is one of its biggest selling points. I see it as more of a Blackarch reskin with some extra features. I found the role choosing a bit annoying as each time it would try to install stuff. Updates also took much longer as it not only took longer to sync with the large Blackarch repo but everything was bleeding edge, so it upgrades more packages at one time. A big issue I ran into was its issues with scripts. When I tried running Airgeddon /dev/null would disappear until I rebooted, causing issues for other tools.

Conclusion

There are many different hacking distros for all sorts of people. Some will fit better than others but none are perfect without modifications. I would recommend Parrot and Athena to beginners, and Kali to more intermediate users. But as always, it is up to you which one works best.

~Happy Hacking!