With the end of 2021 just around the corner, we are pushing out the last release of the year with Kali Linux 2021.4, which is ready for immediate download or updating.
The summary of the changelog since the 2021.3 release from September 2021 is:
Improved Apple M1 support Wide compatibility for Samba Switching package manager mirrors Kaboxer theming Updates to Xfce, GNOME and KDE Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W + USBArmory MkII ARM images More tools Kali on the Apple M1 As we announced in Kali 2021.1 we supported installing Kali Linux on Parallels on Apple Silicon Macs, well with 2021.4, we now also support it on the VMware Fusion Public Tech Preview thanks to the 5.14 kernel having the modules needed for the virtual GPU used. We also have updated the open-vm-tools package, and Kali’s installer will automatically detect if you are installing under VMware and install the open-vm-tools-desktop package, which should allow you to change the resolution out of the box. As a reminder, this is still a preview from VMware, so there may be some rough edges. There is no extra documentation for this because the installation process is the same as VMWare on 64-bit and 32-bit Intel systems, just using the arm64 ISO.
Today we have released the newest version of Kali Linux, 2021.3 (quarter #3), which is now ready for download or updating.
A summary of the changes since the 2021.2 release from June are:
OpenSSL - Wide compatibility by default - Keep reading for what that means New Kali-Tools site - Following the footsteps of Kali-Docs, Kali-Tools has had a complete refresh Better VM support in the Live image session - Copy & paste and drag & drop from your machine into a Kali VM by default New tools - From adversary emulation, to subdomain takeover to Wi-Fi attacks Kali NetHunter smartwatch - First of its kind, for TicHunter Pro KDE 5.21 - Plasma desktop received a version bump OpenSSL: wide compatibility by default Going forwards from Kali Linux 2021.3, OpenSSL has now been configured for wider compatibility to allow Kali to talk to as many services as possible. This means that legacy protocols (such as TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1) and older ciphers are enabled by default. This is done to help increase Kali’s ability to talk to older, obsolete systems and servers that are still using these older protocols. This may potentially increase your options on available attack surfaces (if your target has these End of Life (EoL) services running, having then forgotten about them, what else could this uncover?). While this is not a configuration that would be good for a general purpose operating systems, this setting makes sense for Kali as it enables the user to engage and talk with more potential targets.
Say hello to Kali Linux 2021.2! This release welcomes a mixture of new items as well as enhancements of existing features, and is ready to be downloaded (from our updated page) or upgraded if you have an existing Kali Linux installation.
A quick summary of the changelog since the 2021.1 release from February 2021 is:
On and off for the last 18 months we have been working on Kaboxer, and just before Kali 2021.1, it is ready to say “Hello World” (then it will start shipping you applications).
TL;DR - What is this? What is the name about, Kaboxer? Kali Applications Boxer
What does that mean? Apps in containers, for packages (a way forward for applications that are hard to package properly). But instead of being stand alone containers, they are integrated into the standard Kali package management systems and can be installed/removed through standard apt commands.
When Ampere partnered with Debian, this caught our eye. We were aware that our current ARM cloud provider was soon ending support for arm64 servers (which we use for our build daemons).
At Kali Linux, one of the things which is important to us, is that we prefer not having to cross-compile our ARM binaries that we ship in our Kali packages. There are various reasons as to why, some of them are:
Today we’re pushing out the first Kali Linux release of the year with Kali Linux 2021.1. This edition brings enhancements of existing features, and is ready to be downloaded or upgraded if you have an existing Kali Linux installation.
The summary of the changelog since the 2020.4 release from November 2020 is:
Xfce 4.16 - Our preferred and current default desktop environment has been updated and tweaked KDE 5.20 - Plasma also received a version bump Terminals - mate-terminal, terminator and tilix all had various work carried out on them Command Not Found - A helping hand to say if a program needs to be installed Partnership with more tool authors - BC Security & Joohoi have been producing great tools and we want to support them New tools & updates - Multiple new tools have been added to Kali and are ready for you Kali NetHunter - New BusyBox & Rucky version, and boot-animation Kali ARM - Preliminary support for Parallels on Apple Silicon (Apple M1) & Raspberry Pi 400 (WiFi Support) The Kali project itself also has a couple different changes:
We have always worked to support the information security community as a whole, and over the years experimented with different ideas (some with a greater success than others). One of the key components to Kali is the tools included (either pre-installed or installed via apt). Joining together infosec professional/hobbyist and tool authors, today we are announcing another partnership: Kali has partnered with BC Security.
Many of you may have known about the show Mr Robot and its unique connection to Kali Linux. But there is a little bit more that we have not talked about due to NDAs. But it appears the mystery is over, the red tape has been removed, and we now wanted to take a moment to share it with everyone.
As the end of the year is coming up (some may say not quickly enough), we want to take a few minutes and recap on our roadmap 2019/2020 post.
At a higher level, the last 12 months of Kali Linux (outside of the normal release items - e.g. packages updates), Kali has had various refreshes, switches and additional new features added.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Today we are announcing the Kali Linux newsletter.
It’s easy to miss certain news. Not everyone is regularly checking our web page to see if something has been posted (and we don’t have a regular schedule of when we update). It is easy to be drowned out in social networks with everything else going on. And RSS feeds have not been as common as they once were. So to try and help keep you in the loop with Kali Linux, we now have a newsletter option.
