Open Source Linux Penetration Testing Tools
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Penetration Testing Tools for Linux
View 20 business solutionsBrowse free open source Penetration Testing tools and projects for Linux below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source Penetration Testing tools by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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Metasploitable
Metasploitable is an intentionally vulnerable Linux virtual machine
This is Metasploitable2 (Linux) Metasploitable is an intentionally vulnerable Linux virtual machine. This VM can be used to conduct security training, test security tools, and practice common penetration testing techniques. The default login and password is msfadmin:msfadmin. Never expose this VM to an untrusted network (use NAT or Host-only mode if you have any questions what that means). To contact the developers, please send email to msfdev@metasploit.com -
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VeraCrypt
Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid
VeraCrypt is a free disk encryption software brought to you by IDRIX (https://www.idrix.fr) and based on TrueCrypt 7.1a. It adds enhanced security to the algorithms used for system and partitions encryption making it immune to new developments in brute-force attacks. It also solves many vulnerabilities and security issues found in TrueCrypt. This enhanced security adds some delay ONLY to the opening of encrypted partitions without any performance impact to the application use phase. This is acceptable to the legitimate owner but it makes it much harder for an attacker to gain access to the encrypted data. All released files are PGP signed with key ID=0x680D16DE, available on key servers and downloadable at https://www.idrix.fr/VeraCrypt/VeraCrypt_PGP_public_key.asc VeraCrypt can mount TrueCrypt volumes. It also can convert them to VeraCrypt format. Documentation: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Documentation.html FAQ : https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/FAQ.html -
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SeedCrackerX
Minecraft mod designed to reverse-engineer
SeedcrackerX is a Minecraft mod designed to reverse-engineer and determine a world’s seed by analyzing in-game structures and environmental data. It operates by collecting information from structures such as shipwrecks, temples, and monuments, then using that data to progressively narrow down possible seeds until the correct one is identified. The mod automates much of this process, initiating cracking procedures once sufficient data has been gathered, often requiring only exploration of specific structures. It includes a graphical configuration interface that allows users to control which structures are used and how data is collected. The system can also integrate with a shared database to contribute discovered seeds, enabling collaborative data gathering across users. Advanced features include brute-force algorithms that refine seed candidates based on structural patterns and hashed seed calculations. -
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ophcrack
A Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables
Ophcrack is a Windows password cracker based on a time-memory trade-off using rainbow tables. This is a new variant of Hellman's original trade-off, with better performance. It recovers 99.9% of alphanumeric passwords in seconds. -
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Zphisher
An automated phishing tool with 30+ templates
Zphisher is an advanced open-source phishing tool for educational and penetration testing purposes. It provides a simple interface for launching phishing attacks by cloning login pages of popular websites. Built in Bash, Zphisher automates server deployment using tunneling services like Ngrok, Localhost.run, and others. It is intended for ethical hacking and security research to demonstrate how phishing attacks work and how to defend against them. -
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PentestGPT
Automated Penetration Testing Agentic Framework Powered by LLMs
PentestGPT is an AI-powered autonomous penetration testing agent designed to perform intelligent, end-to-end security assessments using large language models. Published at USENIX Security 2024, it combines advanced reasoning with an agentic workflow to automate tasks traditionally handled by human pentesters. The platform supports multiple penetration testing categories, including web security, cryptography, reversing, forensics, privilege escalation, and binary exploitation. PentestGPT runs in a Docker-first environment, providing a secure, reproducible setup with built-in tooling and session persistence. It offers real-time feedback and live walkthroughs, allowing users to observe each step of the testing process as it unfolds. Built with a modular and extensible architecture, PentestGPT supports cloud and local LLMs, making it suitable for research, education, and authorized security testing. -
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hashcat
World's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility
hashcat is the world's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility, supporting five unique modes of attack for over 300 highly-optimized hashing algorithms. hashcat currently supports CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware accelerators on Linux, Windows, and macOS, and has facilities to help enable distributed password cracking. Download the latest release and unpack it in the desired location. Please remember to use 7z x when unpacking the archive from the command line to ensure full file paths remain intact. Multi-Device-Types (Utilizing mixed device types in same system). Supports password candidate brain functionality. Supports distributed cracking networks (using overlay). Supports interactive pause / resume. Supports sessions. Supports restore. Supports reading password candidates from file and stdin. Supports hex-salt and hex-charset. Supports automatic performance tuning. Supports automatic keyspace ordering markov-chains. -
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ZAP
The OWASP ZAP core project
The OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) is one of the world’s most popular free security tools and is actively maintained by a dedicated international team of volunteers. It can help you automatically find security vulnerabilities in your web applications while you are developing and testing your applications. It's also a great tool for experienced pentesters to use for manual security testing. ZAP is an easy to use integrated penetration testing tool for finding vulnerabilities in web applications. It is designed to be used by people with a wide range of security experience and as such is ideal for developers and functional testers who are new to penetration testing. ZAP provides automated scanners as well as a set of tools that allow you to find security vulnerabilities manually. It stands between the tester’s browser and the web application so that it can intercept and inspect messages sent between browser and web application. -
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DirBuster is a multi threaded java application designed to brute force directories and files names on web/application servers.
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bettercap
The Swiss Army knife for 802.11, BLE, IPv4 and IPv6 networks
bettercap is a powerful, easily extensible and portable framework written in Go which aims to offer to security researchers, red teamers and reverse engineers an easy to use, all-in-one solution with all the features they might possibly need for performing reconnaissance and attacking WiFi networks, Bluetooth Low Energy devices, wireless HID devices and Ethernet networks. -
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thc-hydra
Shows how easy it would be to gain unauthorized access to a system
Number one of the biggest security holes are passwords, as every password security study shows. This tool is a proof of concept code, to give researchers and security consultants the possibility to show how easy it would be to gain unauthorized access from remote to a system. There are already several login hacker tools available, however, none does either support more than one protocol to attack or support parallelized connects. It was tested to compile cleanly on Linux, Windows/Cygwin, Solaris, FreeBSD/OpenBSD, QNX (Blackberry 10) and MacOS. However the module engine for new services is very easy so it won't take a long time until even more services are supported. Via the command line options you specify which logins to try, which passwords, if SSL should be used, how many parallel tasks to use for attacking, etc. PROTOCOL is the protocol you want to use for attacking, e.g. ftp, smtp, http-get or many others are available. -
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PEASS-ng
Privilege Escalation Awesome Scripts SUITE
These tools search for possible local privilege escalation paths that you could exploit and print them to you with nice colors so you can recognize the misconfigurations easily. All the scripts/binaries of the PEAS suite should be used for authorized penetration testing and/or educational purposes only. Any misuse of this software will not be the responsibility of the author or of any other collaborator. Use it at your own machines and/or with the owner's permission. Here you will find privilege escalation tools for Windows and Linux/Unix and MacOS. Find the latest versions of all the scripts and binaries in the releases page. Check the parsers directory to transform PEASS outputs to JSON, HTML and PDF. -
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Flipper Zero BadUSB
Repository for my flipper zero badUSB payloads
The repository is a public GitHub collection of BadUSB payloads prepared to run from a Flipper Zero device; it’s presented as a plug-and-play library that bundles payload scripts, a README, and supporting files so users can pick and use payloads without heavy setup. The project is heavily PowerShell-oriented and organized into a payloads folder with documentation (README, FAQs) and helper scripts, and the author says they formatted the collection to be easy for others to use. The maintainer also set up short-URL infrastructure to simplify embedding webhooks or tokens into compact one-liners for payload configuration, and the repo includes social/contact links and acknowledgments to related projects. The repository is actively used by a community (many stars, forks and hundreds of commits), and the author explicitly warns about responsible use and includes guidance in the docs. -
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qFlipper
Desktop application for updating Flipper Zero firmware via PC
qFlipper is a cross-platform desktop application that serves as the official graphical interface for managing and maintaining the Flipper Zero device from a computer environment. Built using the Qt framework, it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing a consistent user experience across operating systems. Its primary function is to simplify firmware management by allowing users to update, repair, or install firmware with a single action, reducing the complexity typically associated with embedded device maintenance. In addition to firmware operations, qFlipper includes tools for backing up and restoring user data, ensuring that configurations and captured assets are preserved during updates or troubleshooting. The application also enables users to stream the Flipper Zero display and remotely control the device from their computer, effectively extending its interface beyond the physical hardware. -
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airgeddon
This is a multi-use bash script for Linux systems
airgeddon is an alive project growing day by day. Interface mode switcher (Monitor-Managed) keeping selection even on interface name changing. DoS over wireless networks using different methods (mdk3, mdk4, aireplay-ng). "DoS Pursuit mode" is available to avoid AP channel hopping (available also on DoS performed on Evil Twin attacks). Full support for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. Assisted WPA/WPA2 personal networks Handshake file and PMKID capturing. Cleaning and optimizing Handshake captured files. Offline password decrypting on WPA/WPA2 captured files for personal networks (Handshakes and PMKIDs) using a dictionary, brute-force, and rule-based attacks with aircrack, crunch and hashcat tools. Enterprise networks captured password decrypting based on john the ripper, crunch, asleap and hashcat tools. GPU support available for hashcat. Only Rogue/Fake AP mode to sniff using external sniffer (Hostapd + DHCP + DoS). -
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PDFRip
A multi-threaded PDF password cracking utility
A multi-threaded PDF password cracking utility equipped with commonly encountered password format builders and dictionary attacks. pdfrip is a fast multithreaded PDF password cracking utility written in Rust with support for wordlist-based dictionary attacks, date and number range bruteforcing, and a custom query builder for password formats. You can write your own queries like STRING{69-420} with the -q option which would generate a wordlist with the full number range. You can pass in an year as the input with the -d option which would bruteforce all 365 days of the year in DDMMYYYY format which is a pretty commonly used password format for PDFs. Just give a number range like 5000-100000 with the -n option and it would bruteforce with the whole range. -
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SimpleX
The first messaging platform operating without user identifiers
Other apps have user IDs: Signal, Matrix, Session, Briar, Jami, Cwtch, etc. SimpleX does not, not even random numbers. This radically improves your privacy. The video shows how you connect to your friend via their 1-time QR-code, in person or via a video link. You can also connect by sharing an invitation link. Temporary anonymous pairwise identifiers SimpleX uses temporary anonymous pairwise addresses and credentials for each user contact or group member. It allows to deliver messages without user profile identifiers, providing better meta-data privacy than alternatives. Many communication platforms are vulnerable to MITM attacks by servers or network providers. To prevent it SimpleX apps pass one-time keys out-of-band when you share an address as a link or a QR code. Double-ratchet protocol. OTR messaging with perfect forward secrecy and break-in recovery. NaCL cryptobox in each queue to prevent traffic correlation between message queues if TLS is compromised. -
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bWAPP
an extremely buggy web app !
bWAPP, or a buggy web application, is a free and open source deliberately insecure web application. bWAPP helps security enthusiasts, developers and students to discover and to prevent web vulnerabilities. bWAPP prepares one to conduct successful penetration testing and ethical hacking projects. What makes bWAPP so unique? Well, it has over 100 web bugs! It covers all major known web vulnerabilities, including all risks from the OWASP Top 10 project. The focus is not just on one specific issue... bWAPP is covering a wide range of vulnerabilities! bWAPP is a PHP application that uses a MySQL database. It can be hosted on Linux/Windows with Apache/IIS and MySQL. It is supported on WAMP or XAMPP. Another possibility is to download bee-box, a custom VM pre-installed with bWAPP. This project is part of the ITSEC GAMES project. You can find more about the ITSEC GAMES and bWAPP projects on our blog. For security-testing and educational purposes only! Cheers Malik Mesellem -
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Gobuster
Directory/File, DNS and VHost busting tool written in Go
Gobuster is a tool used to brute-force. This project is born out of the necessity to have something that didn't have a fat Java GUI (console FTW), something that did not do recursive brute force, something that allowed me to brute force folders and multiple extensions at once, something that compiled to native on multiple platforms, something that was faster than an interpreted script (such as Python), and something that didn't require a runtime. Provides several modes, like the classic directory brute-forcing mode, DNS subdomain brute-forcing mode, the mode that enumerates open S3 buckets and looks for existence and bucket listings, and the virtual host brute-forcing mode (not the same as DNS!). Since this tool is written in Go you need to install the Go language/compiler/etc. Full details of installation and set up can be found on the Go language website. Once installed you have two options. You need at least go 1.16.0 to compile gobuster. -
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Ettercap is a multipurpose sniffer/interceptor/logger for switched LAN. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones) and includes many feature for network and host analysis. Development has been moved to GitHub, https://github.com/Ettercap/ettercap
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Flipper Zero Firmware
Flipper Zero firmware source code
Flipper Zero is a portable multi-tool for pentesters and geeks in a toy-like body. It loves hacking digital stuff, such as radio protocols, access control systems, hardware, and more. It's fully open-source and customizable, so you can extend it in whatever way you like. Flipper Zero is a tiny piece of hardware with a curious personality of a cyber-dolphin. It can interact with digital systems in real life and grow while you use it. Explore any kind of access control system, RFID, radio protocols, and debug hardware using GPIO pins. The idea of Flipper Zero is to combine all the hardware tools you'd need for exploration and development on the go. Flipper was inspired by the pwnagotchi project, but unlike other DIY boards, Flipper is designed with the convenience of everyday usage in mind — it has a robust case, handy buttons, and shape, so there are no dirty PCBs or scratchy pins. Flipper turns your projects into a game, reminding you that development should always be fun. -
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Kraken tool
Kraken: A multi-platform distributed brute-force password cracking
Kraken is an online distributed brute force password cracking tool. It allows you to parallelize dictionaries and crunch word generator-based cracking across multiple machines both as a web app in a web browser and as a standalone electron-based client. Kraken aims to be easy to use, fault-tolerant and scalable. Kraken is a dockerized application using docker-compose which will launch the db (Postgres), s3-compliant file storage (Minio), the server and the browser client. You can find the docker-compose file in the root directory of the repository. To upload password lists or dictionaries, upload them to Minio Console at localhost:9001. View the steps explained for a detailed guide Otherwise, you can generate word lists dynamically using crunch. Window EXE portable client needs to run in the folder with its hashcat dependencies. Hashcat files can be downloaded from their home page. -
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Wi-Fi Cracking
Crack WPA Wi-Fi routers with Airodump-ng and Aircrack-ng Hashcat
Crack Wi-Fi networks that are secured using weak passwords. It is not exhaustive, but it should be enough information for you to test your own network's security or break into one nearby. Begin by listing wireless interfaces that support monitor mode. If you do not see an interface listed then your wireless card does not support monitor mode. Start listening to 802.11 Beacon frames broadcast by nearby wireless routers using your monitor interface. WPA/WPA2 uses a 4-way handshake to authenticate devices to the network. You don't have to know anything about what that means, but you do have to capture one of these handshakes in order to crack the network password. These handshakes occur whenever a device connects to the network. The final step is to crack the password using the captured handshake. If you have access to a GPU, it is highly recommended to use hashcat for password cracking. -
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sqlmap
Automatic SQL injection and database takeover tool
sqlmap is a powerful, feature-filled, open source penetration testing tool. It makes detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over the database servers an automated process. sqlmap comes with a great range of features that along with its powerful detection engine make it the ultimate penetration tester. It offers full support for MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, IBM DB2, SQLite, Firebird, and many other database management systems. It also comes with a wide set of switches which include database fingerprinting, over data fetching from the database, accessing the underlying file system, and more. -
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Shannon
Fully autonomous AI hacker to find actual exploits in your web apps
Shannon is an autonomous AI penetration testing system built to find and prove real, exploitable vulnerabilities in web applications rather than stopping at static warnings or best-guess alerts. It focuses on “proof by exploitation,” meaning it actively hunts for attack vectors in your code and then attempts to execute end-to-end exploits to demonstrate impact. The project blends source-aware analysis with automated web interaction so it can validate issues like injection flaws, authentication bypasses, and other exploitable paths in a way that resembles an actual attacker’s workflow. Instead of requiring you to manually reproduce findings, Shannon is designed to produce actionable evidence that a weakness can be weaponized, which helps teams prioritize what truly matters. It positions itself as a pre-attacker safety net, aiming to break your web app before someone else does and thereby reduce the gap between “potentially vulnerable” and “confirmed exploitable.”