--Originally published at Stories by Dennis Kingston on Medium

For anyone that is new to ethical hacking like myself, is very difficult to start because there are so many tools that we can use to test security in our programs and devices. This is why I’m going to talk about the most important tool, Kali Linux, which is an operating system designed for digital forensics and penetration testing.

With Kali, hacking is easier because it has more than 300 pre-installed tools which is a huge amount. Something that is very important in this operating system, is that “root” is the only user available because many pen-testing tools require super-user permissions. But working as a root user can have its consequences. For example, you can change some critical files in the system that you didn’t know they were critical, and then your system will become unusable, that is why it is very important that you install Kali Linux on a Virtual Machine like VirtualBox.

An important feature about Kali, is that it is quiet. And by this I mean that it hides its presence on the network, in order to harden itself against potential attacks. The default settings on Kali, disable many services in order to keep itself quiet.

Obviously there are more operating systems that are designed for hacking as well, like Parrot Security OS and Backbox. https://fossbytes.com/10-best-operating-systems-for-ethical-hacking-and-penetration-testing-2016/

Finally, I would like to mention that sometimes it can be difficult to install and configure, but once you do that, it is not very difficult to use it.

If you want to know more about Kali, check this link https://itsfoss.com/kali-linux-review/.