Hacking is no easy game. Just as much are the skills needed, you require the best of tools. Modern-day hacking and penetration testing have been greatly benefited by the presence of several tools. Let us have a look at the top 10 hacking tools used by hackers.
10 best hacking tools
1. Metasploit
Metasploit is one of the world’s most used framework for penetration testing. It has a number of tools under its belt and it runs on Linux and Windows. Metasploit has a total of 1677 exploits for various platforms like Android, Cisco, BSD, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and many more. There are over 495 payloads available some of which are command line, meterpreter, and dynamic payloads. The Metasploit framework has been written in Perl and since its first release in 2003, it has got regular updates.
2. Wireshark
Wireshark is the most widely used tool for analyzing data packets. Wireshark works on Windows, Mac, Linux Solaris, and even BSD. It has a graphical user interface which makes it easier to use. With Wireshark, you can capture and analyze the packets sent over the same network that you are a part of. The captured packets can be filtered and browsed via the GUI. VOIP calls may also be captured and decoded to get full conversations.
3. John The Ripper
More commonly known as JTR, John the Ripper is a password cracking tool that uses brute-forcing techniques to break passwords. It is available for Linux, Windows, DOS, and OpenVMS. The tool works totally offline though it can be invoked remotely on another system. Apart from the dictionary and brute-forcing, John The Ripper can also perform Rainbow table attacks.
4. Angry IP scanner
Angry IP scanner is a tool that can be used to scan IP addresses. Angry IP is available for all platforms and the best part is that it doesn’t require any installations. It works totally out of the box and can be used to scan your network ports for other devices. Angry IP can also scan the ports of these devices. You can get the hostname, MAC address, and the current logged in user from the scanned systems. All of this information can be exported to CSV, TXT, XML or IP-Port list files.
5 . sqlMap
sqlMap is an open-source tool that can be used to automate the process of hacking an SQL database server. With a sophisticated detection engine, it can automatically detect and exploit various vulnerabilities. There are various DBMS supported including MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, IBM DB2, SQLite, Firebird, Sybase, SAP MaxDB, HSQLDB, and Informix. There are features that will be of great use to people who have good experience with databases.
6. Aircrack-ng
Aircrack-ng is a complete suite of tools needed to assess wireless network security. You can crack WPA PSK and WEP passwords, injecting packets, fake access points, etc. Initially only made for Linux, Aircrack now works on Windows and BSD too.
7. Hashcat
Hash crack is the world’s fastest password cracking utility, at least that’s what the developers claim. Earlier it had a proprietary code base but since 2015 it has been released as FOSS. While Hashcat itself uses CPU power for cracking passwords it has other variants, the ocl Hashcat, and cudaHashcat which use GPU. It can be used for various types of attacks like Dictionary, brute force, fingerprint, hybrid, permutation, etc. attacks. Hashcat is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
8. Social Engineering Toolkit
Social Networking Toolkit or SET is a little different from other hacking tools as it uses social engineering for hacking. You can perform phishing, spam mailing, and many such attacks with this toolkit. SET is available for Linux and Mac.
9. Hydra
Hydra has been the tool of choice for hacking remote authentication services. It can perform rapid dictionary attacks against more than 50 protocols, including telnet, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, smb, several databases, and much more.
10. N-Map
N-Map is a network scanning tool that has been around for the last 20 years. Various sysadmins and penetration testers use it to scan networks. N-Map can bring you information like operating system name and version, services and applications running, firewalls, and dozens of such information. N-map uses raw IP packets to determine all of this information. It is cross-platform and available for all operating systems.
So these were the top 10 hacking tools used by hackers. If you use tools that didn’t make it to this list, comment on them down below.
