Top 10 Things to Do After Installing Kali Linux | Hacktech Beast

Hack-Tech Beast November 04, 2021

 

Top 10 Things to Do After Installing Kali Linux...!

Kali Linux, by default, probably doesn't have everything you need to get you through day-to-day penetration testing with ease. With a few tips, tricks, and applications, we can quickly get started using Kali like a professional white hat.

Most Linux distributions are highly customizable. This makes personalizing your penetration testing distribution a bit daunting. With just a few commands, we can automate tasks, install our favorite software, create additional user accounts, properly configure anonymity software, and optimize our interactions with terminals. There are just a few things we can do to improve our interactions with the operating system.

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1} Install Git

Git is an open-source software version control application. It can be used for collaboratively sharing and editing code but is commonly referenced here on Null Byte as the primary tool for copying (or "cloning") code repositories found on GitHub. Git is a must have tool for penetration testers looking to expand their toolset beyond what's available in the default Kali repositories.

Git can be installed using the below apt-get command.

apt-get install git

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2} Configure Bash Aliases

Bash aliases are fantastic for creating customized command line shortcuts. For example, we can reassign the ls command to automatically use our favorite arguments. Below is an example of a normal ls output.

ls

 androidbins.txt                                      folder-pictures.png     smtp.cracked         text-x-generic.png
 bogus_gmail.creds                                    folder.png              smtp.list            Windows-10
 dumpzilla-b3075d1960874ce82ea76a5be9f58602afb61c39   package-x-generic.png   text-x-generic.ico  'Windows 10 Icons'

Here it is again after creating an ls alias.

ls

total 220K
-rw-------  1 root root  15K Aug 24  2015  folder-pictures.png
-rw-------  1 root root 8.7K Aug 24  2015  folder.png
-rw-------  1 root root  11K Aug 24  2015  package-x-generic.png
-rw-------  1 root root 5.5K Sep  3  2015  text-x-generic.png
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4.0K May 31 00:44 'Windows 10 Icons'/
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4.0K May 31 00:44  Windows-10/
-rwxr-x---  1 root root 103K May 31 00:49  text-x-generic.ico*
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4.0K Jun 11 21:57  dumpzilla-b3075d1960874ce82ea76a5be9f58602afb61c39/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   52 Jul  5 18:13  bogus_gmail.creds
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  15K Jul  5 18:28  smtp.list
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  181 Jul  5 18:43  smtp.cracked
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  23K Jul 23 18:18  androidbins.txt
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4.0K Jul 23 19:22  ./
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4.0K Aug  9 04:25  ../

We're getting a much more verbose output. The ls command is now using the -l, -a, -t, -h, and -r arguments automatically. All of these arguments will instruct ls to use the listing (-l) format, list all (-a) files — including hidden files — and print the file sizes in human-readable (-h) formats (e.g., 1K, 234M, 5G).

y alias will also sort the output by modification time (-t), and reverse (-r) the order of the list so recently modified files appear at the bottom of the terminal. This collection of arguments is my personal ls preference, but yours may be different.

To create aliases, open the /root/.bash_aliases using nano or your favorite text editor. Add the following line to create an alias.

alias ls='ls --color=always -rthla'

We can also go a bit further and add more complex functions to the .bash_aliases file. Below is a simple example of a function designed to keep Kali fully up to date.

function apt-updater {
	apt-get update &&
	apt-get dist-upgrade -Vy &&
	apt-get autoremove -y &&
	apt-get autoclean &&
	apt-get clean &&
	reboot
	}

After saving changes made to the .bash_aliases file, open a new terminal for the changes to take effect. Running the newly created apt-updater function will invoke a series of apt-get commands that will automatically update and maintain your system. The ampersands (&&) ensure that the function doesn't continue to the following command if a prior command fails.

apt-updater

3} Create a New Low Privileged User

Many applications like the Chromium Browser and the Tor Browser should never be opened or used as a root user. Such applications rely heavily upon low-level permissions to deliver some degree of security. It might be beneficial to some users to create a low privileged user account for such activities.

4} Install a Terminal Multiplexer

A multiplexer is a tiling terminal emulator that allows us to open several terminal sessions inside one single window. The major benefit to this is being able to see all of our open terminal sessions at once and not layer the windows on top of each other. Below is a multiplexer example.

There are many noteworthy multiplexers. Tilix, as seen in the above screenshot, is an open-source and reliable option. Alternatives include tmux and screen.

Tilix is available in Kali's APT repositories and can be installed using the below command.

apt-get install tilix

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libgtkd-3-0 libphobos2-ldc-shared78 libvted-3-0 tilix-common
Suggested packages:
  python-nautilus
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libgtkd-3-0 libphobos2-ldc-shared78 libvted-3-0 tilix tilix-common
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 466 not upgraded.
Need to get 10.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 49.1 MB of additional disk space will be used.
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