(28)★★★★★Wireshark (#1, 
1)
Wireshark (known as Ethereal until a trademark dispute in Summer 2006) is a fantastic open source multi-platform network protocol analyzer. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, delving down into just the level of packet detail you need. Wireshark has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session. It also supports hundreds of protocols and media types. A tcpdump-like console version named tshark is included. One word of caution is that Wireshark has suffered from dozens of remotely exploitable security holes, so stay up-to-date and be wary of running it on untrusted or hostile networks (such as security conferences). Read 46 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.12.7 on Aug. 12, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(11)★★★★½Metasploit (#2, 3)
Metasploit took the security world by storm when it was released in 2004. It is an advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code. The extensible model through which payloads, encoders, no-op generators, and exploits can be integrated has made it possible to use the Metasploit Framework as an outlet for cutting-edge exploitation research. It ships with hundreds of exploits, as you can see in their list of modules. This makes writing your own exploits easier, and it certainly beats scouring the darkest corners of the Internet for illicit shellcode of dubious quality. One free extra is Metasploitable, an intentionally insecure Linux virtual machine you can use for testing Metasploit and other exploitation tools without hitting live servers.
Metasploit was completely free, but the project was acquired by Rapid7 in 2009 and it soon sprouted commercial variants. The Framework itself is still free and open source, but they now also offer a free-but-limited Community edition, a more advanced Express edition ($5,000 per year per user), and a full-featured Pro edition. Other paid exploitation tools to consider are Core Impact (more expensive) and Canvas (less).
The Metasploit Framework now includes an official Java-based GUI and also Raphael Mudge's excellent Armitage. The Community, Express, and Pro editions have web-based GUIs. Read 19 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.11 on Dec. 18, 2014 (5 years, 6 months ago).
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(16)★★★Nessus (#3, 
2)
Nessus is one of the most popular and capable vulnerability scanners, particularly for UNIX systems. It was initially free and open source, but they closed the source code in 2005 and removed the free "Registered Feed" version in 2008. It now costs $2,190 per year, which still beats many of its competitors. A free “Nessus Home” version is also available, though it is limited and only licensed for home network use.
Nessus is constantly updated, with more than 70,000 plugins. Key features include remote and local (authenticated) security checks, a client/server architecture with a web-based interface, and an embedded scripting language for writing your own plugins or understanding the existing ones. Read 24 reviews.
Latest release: version 6.3.3 on March 16, 2015 (5 years, 3 months ago).
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(11)★★★★Aircrack (#4, 17)
Aircrack is a suite of tools for 802.11a/b/g WEP and WPA cracking. It implements the best known cracking algorithms to recover wireless keys once enough encrypted packets have been gathered. . The suite comprises over a dozen discrete tools, including airodump (an 802.11 packet capture program), aireplay (an 802.11 packet injection program), aircrack (static WEP and WPA-PSK cracking), and airdecap (decrypts WEP/WPA capture files). Read 23 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.1 on April 24, 2010 (10 years, 2 months ago).
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(3)★★★½Snort (#5, 2)
This network intrusion detection and prevention system excels at traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. Through protocol analysis, content searching, and various pre-processors, Snort detects thousands of worms, vulnerability exploit attempts, port scans, and other suspicious behavior. Snort uses a flexible rule-based language to describe traffic that it should collect or pass, and a modular detection engine. Also check out the free Basic Analysis and Security Engine (BASE), a web interface for analyzing Snort alerts.
While Snort itself is free and open source, parent company SourceFire offers their VRT-certified rules for $499 per sensor per year and a complementary product line of software and appliances with more enterprise-level features. Sourcefire also offers a free 30-day delayed feed. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.9.7.5 on July 23, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(11)★★★½Cain and Abel (#6, 3)
UNIX users often smugly assert that the best free security tools support their platform first, and Windows ports are often an afterthought. They are usually right, but Cain & Abel is a glaring exception. This Windows-only password recovery tool handles an enormous variety of tasks. It can recover passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords using dictionary, brute-force and cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analyzing routing protocols. It is also well documented. Read 26 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.9.56 on April 7, 2014 (6 years, 3 months ago).
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(17)★★★★BackTrack (#7, 25)
This excellent bootable live CD Linux distribution comes from the merger of Whax and Auditor. It boasts a huge variety of Security and Forensics tools and provides a rich development environment. User modularity is emphasized so the distribution can be easily customized by the user to include personal scripts, additional tools, customized kernels, etc. BackTrack is succeeded by Kali Linux. Read 22 reviews.
Latest release: version 5 R3 on Aug. 13, 2012 (7 years, 11 months ago).
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(16)★★★★½Netcat (#8, 4)
This simple utility reads and writes data across TCP or UDP network connections. It is designed to be a reliable back-end tool to use directly or easily drive by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need, including port binding to accept incoming connections.
The original Netcat was released by Hobbit in 1995, but it hasn't been maintained despite its popularity. It can sometimes even be hard to find a copy of the v1.10 source code. The flexibility and usefulness of this tool prompted the Nmap Project to produce Ncat, a modern reimplementation which supports SSL, IPv6, SOCKS and http proxies, connection brokering, and more. Other takes on this classic tool include the amazingly versatile Socat, OpenBSD's nc, Cryptcat, Netcat6, pnetcat, SBD, and so-called GNU Netcat. Read 25 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.10 on March 20, 1996 (24 years, 3 months ago).
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(3)★★★★tcpdump (#9, 1)
Tcpdump is the network sniffer we all used before (Wireshark) came on the scene, and many of us continue to use it frequently. It may not have the bells and whistles (such as a pretty GUI and parsing logic for hundreds of application protocols) that Wireshark has, but it does the job well and with less security risk. It also requires fewer system resources. While Tcpdump doesn't receive new features often, it is actively maintained to fix bugs and portability problems. It is great for tracking down network problems or monitoring activity. There is a separate Windows port named WinDump. tcpdump is the source of the Libpcap/WinPcap packet capture library, which is used by Nmap and many other tools. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.7.4 on April 22, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
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(7)★★★★John the Ripper (#10, unchanged)
John the Ripper is a fast password cracker for UNIX/Linux and Mac OS X.. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords, though it supports hashes for many other platforms as well. There is an official free version, a community-enhanced version (with many contributed patches but not as much quality assurance), and an inexpensive pro version. You will probably want to start with some wordlists, which you can find here, here, or here. Read 17 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.8.0 on May 30, 2013 (7 years, 1 month ago).
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(3)★★★★½Kismet (#11, 4)
Kismet is a console (ncurses) based 802.11 layer-2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. It identifies networks by passively sniffing (as opposed to more active tools such as NetStumbler), and can even decloak hidden (non-beaconing) networks if they are in use. It can automatically detect network IP blocks by sniffing TCP, UDP, ARP, and DHCP packets, log traffic in Wireshark/tcpdump compatible format, and even plot detected networks and estimated ranges on downloaded maps. As you might expect, this tool is commonly used for wardriving. Oh, and also warwalking, warflying, and warskating, etc. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version Kismet-2013-03-R1b on April 8, 2013 (7 years, 3 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★OpenSSH/PuTTY/SSH (#12, 2)
SSH (Secure Shell) is the now ubiquitous program for logging into or executing commands on a remote machine. It provides secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network, replacing the hideously insecure telnet/rlogin/rsh alternatives. Most UNIX users run the open source OpenSSH server and client. Windows users often prefer the free PuTTY client, which is also available for many mobile devices, and WinSCP. Other Windows users prefer the nice terminal-based port of OpenSSH that comes with Cygwin. There are dozens of other free and proprietary clients to consider as well. Read 2 reviews.
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(22)★★★★½Burp Suite (#13, 63)
Burp Suite is an integrated platform for attacking web applications. It contains a variety of tools with numerous interfaces between them designed to facilitate and speed up the process of attacking an application. All of the tools share the same framework for handling and displaying HTTP messages, persistence, authentication, proxies, logging, alerting and extensibility. There is a limited free version and also Burp Suite Professional ($299 per user per year). Read 26 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.4.01 on June 3, 2011 (9 years, 1 month ago).
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(26)★★★★½Nikto (#14, 2)
Nikto is an Open Source (GPL) web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 6400 potentially dangerous files/CGIs, checks for outdated versions of over 1200 servers, and version specific problems on over 270 servers. It also checks for server configuration items such as the presence of multiple index files, HTTP server options, and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software. Scan items and plugins are frequently updated and can be automatically updated. Read 43 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.1.4 on Feb. 20, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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(4)★★★★Hping (#15, 9)
This handy little utility assembles and sends custom ICMP, UDP, or TCP packets and then displays any replies. It was inspired by the ping command, but offers far more control over the probes sent. It also has a handy traceroute mode and supports IP fragmentation. Hping is particularly useful when trying to traceroute/ping/probe hosts behind a firewall that blocks attempts using the standard utilities. This often allows you to map out firewall rule sets. It is also great for learning more about TCP/IP and experimenting with IP protocols. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated since 2005. The Nmap Project created and maintains Nping, a similar program with more modern features such as IPv6 support, and a unique echo mode. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version hping3-20051105 on Nov. 5, 2005 (14 years, 8 months ago).
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(13)★★★★½Ettercap (#16, 5)
Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones) and includes many feature for network and host analysis. Read 30 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.8.2-Ferri on March 14, 2015 (5 years, 3 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★Sysinternals (#17, 7)
Sysinternals provides many small windows utilities that are quite useful for low-level windows hacking. Some are free of cost and/or include source code, while others are proprietary. Survey respondents were most enamored with:
- ProcessExplorer for keeping an eye on the files and directories open by any process (like lsof on UNIX).
- PsTools for managing (executing, suspending, killing, detailing) local and remote processes.
- Autoruns for discovering what executables are set to run during system boot up or login.
- RootkitRevealer for detecting registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
- TCPView, for viewing TCP and UDP traffic endpoints used by each process (like Netstat on UNIX).
Many of the Sysinternals tools originally came with source code and there were even Linux versions. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July 2006, promising that “Customers will be able to continue building on Sysinternals' advanced utilities, technical information and source code”. Less than four months later, Microsoft removed most of that source code. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: Feb. 4, 2011 (9 years, 5 months ago).
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(15)★★★½w3af (#18, new!)
W3af is an extremely popular, powerful, and flexible framework for finding and exploiting web application vulnerabilities. It is easy to use and extend and features dozens of web assessment and exploitation plugins. In some ways it is like a web-focused Metasploit. Read 18 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.1 on Oct. 11, 2011 (8 years, 9 months ago).
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(31)★★★★OpenVAS (#19, new!)
OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner that was forked from the last free version of Nessus after that tool went proprietary in 2005. OpenVAS plugins are still written in the Nessus NASL language. The project seemed dead for a while, but development has restarted. Read 38 reviews.
Latest release: version 8.0 on April 2, 2015 (5 years, 3 months ago).
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(9)★★★★★Scapy (#20, 8)
Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation tool, packet generator, network scanner, network discovery tool, and packet sniffer. Note that Scapy is a very low-level tool—you interact with it using the Python programming language. It provides classes to interactively create packets or sets of packets, manipulate them, send them over the wire, sniff other packets from the wire, match answers and replies, and more. Read 12 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.2.0 on Feb. 28, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★Ping/telnet/dig/traceroute/whois/netstat (#21, 8)
While there are many advanced high-tech tools out there to assist in security auditing, don't forget about the basics! Everyone should be very familiar with these tools as they come with most operating systems (except that Windows omits whois and uses the name tracert). They can be very handy in a pinch, although more advanced functionality is available from Hping and Netcat. Read 4 reviews.
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(17)★★★★THC Hydra (#22, 7)
When you need to brute force crack a remote authentication service, Hydra is often the tool of choice. It can perform rapid dictionary attacks against more than 50 protocols, including telnet, ftp, http, https, smb, several databases, and much more. Like THC Amap this release is from the fine folks at THC. Other online crackers are Medusa and Ncrack. The Nmap Security Scanner also contains many online brute force password cracking modules. Read 60 reviews.
Latest release: version 8.2 on June 16, 2016 (4 years ago).
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no ratingPerl/Python/Ruby (#23, 3)
While many canned security tools are available on this site for handling common tasks, scripting languages allow you to write your own (or modify existing ones) when you need something more custom. Quick, portable scripts can test, exploit, or even fix systems. Archives like CPAN are filled with modules such as Net::RawIP and protocol implementations to make your tasks even easier. Many security tools use scripting languages heavily for extensibility. For example Scapy interaction is through a Python interpreter, Metasploit modules are written in Ruby, and Nmap's scripting engine uses Lua. Read 1 review.
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(2)★★½Paros proxy (#24, 8)
A Java-based web proxy for assessing web application vulnerability. It supports editing/viewing HTTP/HTTPS messages on-the-fly to change items such as cookies and form fields. It includes a web traffic recorder, web spider, hash calculator, and a scanner for testing common web application attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 3.2.13 on Aug. 8, 2006 (13 years, 11 months ago).
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(2)★★★★½NetStumbler (#25, 7)
Netstumbler is the best known Windows tool for finding open wireless access points ("wardriving"). They also distribute a WinCE version for PDAs and such named MiniStumbler. The tool is currently free but Windows-only and no source code is provided. It uses a more active approach to finding WAPs than passive sniffers such as Kismet or KisMAC. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.4.0 on April 1, 2004 (16 years, 3 months ago).
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Google (#26, 8)
While it is far more than a security tool, Google's massive database is a gold mine for security researchers and penetration testers. You can use it to dig up information about a target company by using directives such as “site:target-domain.com” and find employee names, sensitive information that they wrongly thought was hidden, vulnerable software installations, and more. Similarly, when a bug is found in yet another popular webapp, Google can often provide a list of vulnerable servers worldwide within seconds. Check out the Google Hacking Database and Johnny Long's excellent book: Google Hacking for Penetration Testers. Read 5 reviews.
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(1)★★★★★OSSEC HIDS (#27, 29)
OSSEC HIDS performs log analysis, integrity checking, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response. In addition to its IDS functionality, it is commonly used as a SEM/SIM solution. Because of its powerful log analysis engine, ISPs, universities and data centers are running OSSEC HIDS to monitor and analyze their firewalls, IDSs, web servers and authentication logs. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.8.2 on June 10, 2015 (5 years ago).
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(1)★★★★★WebScarab (#28, 7)
In its simplest form, WebScarab records the conversations (requests and responses) that it observes, and allows the operator to review them in various ways. WebScarab is designed to be a tool for anyone who needs to expose the workings of an HTTP(S) based application, whether to allow the developer to debug otherwise difficult problems, or to allow a security specialist to identify vulnerabilities in the way that the application has been designed or implemented. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 20100820-1632 on Aug. 20, 2010 (9 years, 10 months ago).
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(12)★★★★½Core Impact (#29, 15)
Core Impact isn't cheap (be prepared to spend at least $30,000), but it is widely considered to be the most powerful exploitation tool available. It sports a large, regularly updated database of professional exploits, and can do neat tricks like exploiting one machine and then establishing an encrypted tunnel through that machine to reach and exploit other boxes. Other good options include Metasploit and Canvas. Read 20 reviews.
Latest release: version 12 on Aug. 8, 2011 (8 years, 11 months ago).
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(11)★★★★½sqlmap (#30, new!)
sqlmap is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over of back-end database servers. It comes with a broad range of features, from database fingerprinting to fetching data from the DB and even accessing the underlying file system and executing OS commands via out-of-band connections. The authors recommend using the development release from their Subversion repository. Read 15 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.9 on April 11, 2011 (9 years, 3 months ago).
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(2)★★★★½TrueCrypt (#31, 66)
The authors of TrueCrypt abandoned the project in May 2014. While many still use the software, there are several forks and alternatives that are striving to take its lofty place. TrueCrypt is an excellent open source disk encryption system for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Users can encrypt entire filesystems, which are then on-the-fly encrypted/decrypted as needed without user intervention beyond initially entering their passphrase. A clever hidden volume feature allows you to hide a second layer of particularly sensitive content with plausible deniability about whether it even exists. Then if you are forced to give up your passphrase, you give them the first-level secret. That only allows them access to the innocuous material you have there, without proving that a second level key even exists. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.2 on May 28, 2014 (6 years, 1 month ago).
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(7)★★★½dsniff (#32, 15)
This popular and well-engineered suite by Dug Song includes many tools: dsniff, filesnarf, mailsnarf, msgsnarf, urlsnarf, and webspy passively monitor a network for interesting data (passwords, e-mail, files, etc.); arpspoof, dnsspoof, and macof facilitate the interception of network traffic normally unavailable to an attacker (e.g, due to layer-2 switching); and sshmitm and webmitm implement active monkey-in-the-middle attacks against redirected ssh and https sessions by exploiting weak bindings in ad-hoc PKI. A separately maintained partial Windows port is available here. The suite suffers from the lack of any updates in the last decade, but it is still a great toolset for handling your password sniffing needs. Read 8 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.3 on Dec. 17, 2000 (19 years, 6 months ago).
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no ratingIDA Pro (#33, 12)
Disassembly is a big part of security research. It will help you dissect that Microsoft patch to discover the silently fixed bugs they don't tell you about, or more closely examine a server binary to determine why your exploit isn't working. Many debuggers are available, but IDA Pro has become the de-facto standard for the analysis of hostile code and vulnerability research. This interactive, programmable, extensible, multi-processor disassembler has a graphical interface on Windows and console interfaces on Linux and Mac OS X. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 6.8 on April 13, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
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(1)★★★★Maltego (#34, new!)
Maltego is a forensics and data mining application. It is capable of querying various public data sources and graphically depicting the relationships between entities such as people, companies, web sites, and documents. Maltego is an open source intelligence too, but isn't open source software. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 3.0.3 on Jan. 17, 2011 (9 years, 5 months ago).
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(4)★★★★★ophcrack (#35, new!)
Ophcrack is a free rainbow-table based cracker for Windows passwords (though the tool itself runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac). Features include LM and NTLM hash cracking, a GUI, the ability to load hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition, and a Live CD version. Some tables are provided as a free download but larger ones have to be bought from Objectif Sécurité. Read 10 reviews.
Latest release: version 3.6.0 on June 4, 2013 (7 years, 1 month ago).
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(14)★★½Nexpose (#36, new!)
Rapid7 Nexpose is a vulnerability scanner which aims to support the entire vulnerability management lifecycle, including discovery, detection, verification, risk classification, impact analysis, reporting and mitigation. It integrates with Rapid7's Metasploit for vulnerability exploitation. It is sold as standalone software, an appliance, virtual machine, or as a managed service or private cloud deployment. User interaction is through a web browser. There is a free but limited community edition as well as commercial versions which start at $2,000 per user per year. Read 16 reviews.
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(1)★★★★★Netfilter (#37, 14)
Netfilter is a powerful packet filter implemented in the standard Linux kernel. The userspace iptables tool is used for configuration. It now supports packet filtering (stateless or stateful), all kinds of network address and port translation (NAT/NAPT), and multiple API layers for 3rd party extensions. It includes many different modules for handling unruly protocols such as FTP. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.2 on Aug. 30, 2015 (4 years, 10 months ago).
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no ratingGnuPG/PGP (#38, 8)
PGP is the famous encryption system originally written by Phil Zimmerman which helps secure your data from eavesdroppers and other risks. GnuPG is a very well-regarded open source implementation of the PGP standard (the actual executable is named gpg). While the excellent GnuPG is always free, PGP is now owned by Symantec and costs a lot of money. Review this tool.
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(2)★★★★½skipfish (#39, new!)
skipfish is an active web application security reconnaissance tool. It prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.10b on Dec. 4, 2012 (7 years, 7 months ago).
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(6)★★★½GFI LanGuard (#40, 20)
GFI LanGuard is a network security and vulnerability scanner designed to help with patch management, network and software audits, and vulnerability assessments. The price is based on the number of IP addresses you wish to scan. A free trial version (up to 5 IP addresses) is available. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 2011 on May 19, 2001 (19 years, 1 month ago).
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(7)★★★½Acunetix (#41, 55)
Acunetix is a web vulnerability scanner that automatically checks web applications for vulnerabilities such as SQL Injections, cross site scripting, arbitrary file creation/deletion, and weak password strength on authentication pages. It boasts a comfortable GUI, an ability to create professional security audit and compliance reports, and tools for advanced manual webapp testing. Read 12 reviews.
Latest release: version 11 on Nov. 16, 2016 (3 years, 7 months ago).
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(4)★★★★QualysGuard (#42, 31)
QualysGuard is a popular SaaS (software as a service) vulnerability management offering. It's web-based UI offers network discovery and mapping, asset prioritization, vulnerability assessment reporting and remediation tracking according to business risk. Internal scans are handled by Qualys appliances which communicate back to the cloud-based system. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 6.18 on Feb. 25, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★VMware (#43, 46)
VMware virtualization software lets you run one operating system within another. This is quite useful for security researchers who commonly need to test code, exploits, etc on multiple platforms. It only runs on Windows and Linux as the host OS, but pretty much any x86 or x86_64 OS will run inside the virtualized environment. It is also useful for setting up sandboxes. You can browse from within a VMware window so the even if you are infected with malware, it cannot reach your host OS. And recovering the guest OS is as simple as loading a "snapshot" from prior to the infection. VMware player (executes, but can't create OS images) and VMWare Server (partitions a physical server machine into multiple virtual machines) were recently released for free. An open-source alternative is VirtualBox. Xen is a Linux-specific virtualization system. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 12.0.0 on Aug. 24, 2015 (4 years, 10 months ago).
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(2)★★★OllyDbg (#44, 49)
OllyDbg is a 32-bit assembler level analyzing debugger for Microsoft Windows. Emphasis on binary code analysis makes it particularly useful in cases where source is unavailable. OllyDbg features an intuitive user interface, advanced code analysis capable of recognizing procedures, loops, API calls, switches, tables, constants and strings, an ability to attach to a running program, and good multi-thread support. OllyDbg is free to download and use but no source code is provided. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.01 on Sept. 27, 2013 (6 years, 9 months ago).
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(2)★★★Ntop (#45, 9)
Ntop shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user's terminal. In Web mode, it acts as a Web server, creating an HTML dump of the network status. It sports a NetFlow/sFlow emitter/collector, an HTTP-based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRD for persistently storing traffic statistics. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.0.3 on Oct. 24, 2010 (9 years, 8 months ago).
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(3)★★★MBSA (#46, 54)
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is an easy-to-use tool designed for the IT professional that helps small and medium-sized businesses determine their security state in accordance with Microsoft security recommendations and offers specific remediation guidance. Built on the Windows Update Agent and Microsoft Update infrastructure, MBSA ensures consistency with other Microsoft management products including Microsoft Update (MU), Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM). Apparently MBSA on average scans over 3 million computers each week. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.3 on Nov. 12, 2013 (6 years, 7 months ago).
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(2)★★★★AppScan (#47, 51)
AppScan provides security testing throughout the application development lifecycle, easing unit testing and security assurance early in the development phase. Appscan scans for many common vulnerabilities, such as cross site scripting, HTTP response splitting, parameter tampering, hidden field manipulation, backdoors/debug options, buffer overflows and more. AppScan was merged into IBM's Rational division after IBM purchased its original developer (Watchfire) in 2007. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 8.5 on Nov. 15, 2011 (8 years, 7 months ago).
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(2)★★★★½OSSIM (#48, new!)
Alienvault OSSIM stands for Open Source Security Information Management. Its goal is to provide a comprehensive compilation of tools which, when working together, grant network/security administrators with a detailed view over each and every aspect of networks, hosts, physical access devices, and servers. OSSIM incorporates several other tools, including Nagios and OSSEC HIDS. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 5.0.3 on June 2, 2015 (5 years, 1 month ago).
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(1)★★★★Medusa (#49, new!)
Medusa is intended to be a speedy, massively parallel, modular, login brute-forcer. It supports many protocols: AFP, CVS, FTP, HTTP, IMAP, rlogin, SSH, Subversion, and VNC to name a few. Other online crackers are THC Hydra and Ncrack. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0 on Feb. 9, 2010 (10 years, 5 months ago).
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no ratingOpenSSL (#50, 9)
The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and open source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. Apart from being a component of many crypto programs, OpenSSL comes with a lot of command-line tools for encryption, hashing, certificate handling, and more. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 1.0.2d on July 9, 2015 (5 years ago).
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(1)★★★★★Canvas (#51, 37)
Canvas is a commercial vulnerability exploitation tool from Dave Aitel's ImmunitySec. It includes more than 370 exploits and is less expensive than Core Impact or the commercial versions of Metasploit. It comes with full source code, and occasionally even includes zero-day exploits. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 6.73 on Oct. 26, 2011 (8 years, 8 months ago).sploits
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(1)★★★fgdump (#52, 5)
fgdump is a newer version of the pwdump tool for extracting NTLM and LanMan password hashes from Windows. It is also capable of displaying password histories if they are available. It outputs the data in L0phtCrack-compatible form, and can write to an output file. fgdump attempts to disable antivirus software before running. It then runs pwdump, cachedump (cached credentials dump), and pstgdump (protected storage dump). Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.1.0 on Sept. 18, 2008 (11 years, 9 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★Tor (#53, 6)
Tor is a network of virtual tunnels designed to improve privacy and security on the Internet by routing your requests through a series of intermediate machines. It uses a normal proxy server interface so that ordinary Internet applications like web browsers and chat programs can be configured to use it. In addition to helping preserve users' anonymity, Tor can help evade firewall restrictions. Tor's hidden services allow users publish web sites and other services without revealing their identity or location. For a free cross-platform GUI, users recommend Vidalia. Remember that Tor exit nodes are sometimes run by malicious parties and can sniff your traffic, so avoid authenticating using insecure network protocols (such as non-SSL web sites and mail servers). That is always dangerous, but particularly bad when routing through Tor. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.2.6.10 on July 12, 2015 (4 years, 12 months ago).
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(1)★★★Retina (#54, 29)
Like Nessus, Retina's function is to scan all the hosts on a network and report on any vulnerabilities found. It was written by eEye, who are well known for their security research. Read 2 reviews.
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(3)★★★★Firefox (#55, new!)
Firefox is a web browser, a descendant of Mozilla. It emerged as a serious competitor to Internet Explorer, with improved security as one of its features. While Firefox no longer has a stellar security record, security professionals still appreciate it for its wide selection of security-related add-ons, including Tamper Data, Firebug, and NoScript. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 40.0.3 on Aug. 27, 2015 (4 years, 10 months ago).
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no ratingOpenVPN (#56, 36)
OpenVPN is an open-source SSL VPN package which can accommodate a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, WiFi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls. OpenVPN implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the industry standard SSL/TLS protocol, supports flexible client authentication methods based on certificates, smart cards, and/or 2-factor authentication, and allows user or group-specific access control policies using firewall rules applied to the VPN virtual interface. OpenVPN uses OpenSSL as its primary cryptographic library. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 2.3.8 on Aug. 4, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(5)★★★★½L0phtCrack (#57, 30)
L0phtCrack attempts to crack Windows passwords from hashes which it can obtain (given proper access) from stand-alone Windows workstations, networked servers, primary domain controllers, or Active Directory. In some cases it can sniff the hashes off the wire. It also has numerous methods of generating password guesses (dictionary, brute force, etc). LC5 was discontinued by Symantec in 2006, then re-acquired by the original L0pht guys and reborn as LC6 in 2009. For free alternatives, consider ophcrack, Cain and Abel, or John the Ripper. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 6.0.11 on Jan. 9, 2011 (9 years, 6 months ago).
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(62)★★★★★Social Engineer Toolkit (#58, new!)
The Social Engineer Toolkit incorporates many useful social-engineering attacks all in one interface. The main purpose of SET is to automate and improve on many of the social-engineering attacks out there. It can automatically generate exploit-hiding web pages or email messages, and can use Metasploit payloads to, for example, connect back with a shell once the page is opened. Read 82 reviews.
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(2)★★★★★Yersinia (#59, 7)
Yersinia is a low-level protocol attack tool useful for penetration testing. It is capable of many diverse attacks over multiple protocols, such as becoming the root role in the Spanning Tree (Spanning Tree Protocol), creating virtual CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) neighbors, becoming the active router in a HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) scenario, faking DHCP replies, and other low-level attacks. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.7.1 on Jan. 26, 2007 (13 years, 5 months ago).
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(4)★★★★★Fiddler (#60, new!)
Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.5.1.5 on July 23, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(2)★★★★sslstrip (#61, new!)
sslstrip is an SSL stripping proxy, designed to make unencrypted HTTP sessions look as much as possible like HTTPS sessions. It converts https links to http or to https with a known private key. It even provides a padlock favicon for the illusion of a secure channel. Many HTTPS sites are normally accessed from a redirect on an HTTP page, and many users don't notice when their connection isn't upgraded. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.7 on Dec. 18, 2009 (10 years, 6 months ago).
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no ratingSolarWinds (#62, 16)
SolarWinds has created and sells dozens of special-purpose tools targeted at systems administrators. Security-related tools include many network discovery scanners, an SNMP brute-force cracker, router password decryption, a TCP connection reset program, one of the fastest and easiest router config download/upload applications available and more. Read 1 review.
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no ratingNgrep (#63, 25)
ngrep strives to provide most of GNU grep's common features, applying them to the network layer. ngrep is a pcap-aware tool that will allow you to specify extended regular or hexadecimal expressions to match against data payloads of packets. It currently recognizes TCP, UDP and ICMP across Ethernet, PPP, SLIP, FDDI, Token Ring and null interfaces, and understands bpf filter logic in the same fashion as more common packet sniffing tools, such as tcpdump and snoop. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 1.45 on Nov. 28, 2006 (13 years, 7 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★EtherApe (#64, 21)
Featuring link layer, IP, and TCP modes, EtherApe displays network activity graphically with a color coded protocols display. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. It supports Ethernet, WLAN, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.9.13 on May 5, 2013 (7 years, 2 months ago).
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(6)★★★★½Splunk (#65, new!)
Splunk is a tool to search, report, monitor and analyze real-time streaming and historical IT data. It collects logs from a variety of sources and makes them searchable in a unified interface. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.1.7 on Feb. 14, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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(3)★★½Angry IP Scanner (#66, 15)
Angry IP Scanner is a small open source Java application which performs host discovery ("ping scan") and port scans. The old 2.x release was Windows-only, but the new 3.X series runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows as long as Java is installed. Version 3.X omits the vampire zebra logo. As with all connect()-based scanners, performance on Windows XP SP2 and newer be poor due to limitations added to tcpip.sys. The FAQ provides details and workarounds. A short review was posted to nmap-dev in 2008. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 3.0-beta4 on March 23, 2009 (11 years, 3 months ago).
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(2)★★★½NetWitness NextGen (#67, new!)
NetWitness NextGen is a network security monitor. The heart of the monitor is the Decoder subsystem that records network traffic for analysis. The Investigator is a protocol analyzer meant to be run on captured traffic. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 9.0.5.4 on March 17, 2010 (10 years, 3 months ago).
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(6)★★★★½Secunia PSI (#68, new!)
Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) is a free security tool designed to detect vulnerable and out-dated programs and plug-ins that expose your PC to attacks. Attacks exploiting vulnerable programs and plug-ins are rarely blocked by traditional anti-virus programs. Secunia PSI checks only the machine it is running on, while its commercial sibling Secunia CSI (Corporate Software Inspector) scans multiple machines on a network. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0 on Jan. 10, 2011 (9 years, 6 months ago).
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(6)★★★★★Nagios (#69, 2)
Nagios is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and when they get better. Some of its many features include monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, ICMP, etc.), monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.), and contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method). Read 8 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.0.8 on Aug. 12, 2014 (5 years, 11 months ago).
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(4)★★★½Immunity Debugger (#70, new!)
Immunity Debugger is a debugger whose design reflects the need to write exploits, analyze malware, and reverse engineer binary files. It builds on a solid user interface with function graphing, the industry's first heap analysis tool built specifically for heap creation, and a large and well supported Python API for easy extensibility. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.80 on Dec. 6, 2010 (9 years, 7 months ago).
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(3)★★½Superscan (#71, 49)
Superscan is a free Windows-only closed-source TCP/UDP port scanner by Foundstone (now part of McAfee). It includes a variety of additional networking tools such as ping, traceroute, HTTP HEAD, and whois. Some functionality has been crippled by restrictions imposed by Microsoft in Windows XP SP2 and newer releases. This tool is not really maintained (the latest release was in 2004). Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.0 on March 11, 2004 (16 years, 4 months ago).
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no ratingsqlninja (#72, new!)
sqlininja exploits web applications that use Microsoft SQL Server as a database backend. Its focus is on getting a running shell on the remote host. sqlninja doesn't find an SQL injection in the first place, but automates the exploitation process once one has been discovered. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 0.2.6-r1 on April 29, 2012 (8 years, 2 months ago).
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no ratingHelix (#73, 21)
Helix is a Ubuntu live CD customized for computer forensics. Helix has been designed very carefully to not touch the host computer in any way and it is forensically sound. Helix will not auto mount swap space, or auto mount any attached devices. Helix also has a special Windows autorun side for Incident Response and Forensics. Downloading of the live CD is only provided as a complement to membership in the e-fense members-only forum. An unsupported, older, no-cost version is available as well. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 2009R3 on Dec. 23, 2009 (10 years, 6 months ago).
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(6)★★★★★Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (#74, new!)
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a malware scanner for Windows. The authors claim to use a variety of technologies to find malware undetectable by other malware scanners. There is a free trial with limited options and a supported full version with the ability to run scheduled scans. Read 7 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.1.8.1057 on June 29, 2015 (5 years ago).
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(6)★★★★★Netsparker (#75, new!)
Netsparker is a web application security scanner, with support for both detection and exploitation of vulnerabilities. It aims to be false positive–free by only reporting confirmed vulnerabilities after successfully exploiting or otherwise testing them. Read 7 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.8.3.3 on Feb. 10, 2011 (9 years, 5 months ago).
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(8)★★★½HP WebInspect (#76, 36)
WebInspect is a web application security assessment tool that helps identify known and unknown vulnerabilities within the Web application layer. It can also help check that a Web server is configured properly, and attempts common web attacks such as parameter injection, cross-site scripting, directory traversal, and more. It was produced by Spidynamics, which is now part of HP. Read 11 reviews.
Latest release: version 9.10 on June 27, 2011 (9 years ago).
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(1)★★★★★BeEF (#77, new!)
BeEF is a browser exploitation framework. This tool will demonstrate the collecting of zombie browsers and browser vulnerabilities in real-time. It provides a command and control interface which facilitates the targeting of individual or groups of zombie browsers. It is designed to make the creation of new exploit modules easy. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.4.5.0 on April 25, 2014 (6 years, 2 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★Argus (#78, 5)
Argus is a fixed-model Real Time Flow Monitor designed to track and report on the status and performance of all network transactions seen in a data network traffic stream. Argus provides a common data format for reporting flow metrics such as connectivity, capacity, demand, loss, delay, and jitter on a per transaction basis. The record format that Argus uses is flexible and extensible, supporting generic flow identifiers and metrics, as well as application/protocol specific information. There is also another open source network monitoring program named Argus. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 3.7 on Feb. 1, 2013 (7 years, 5 months ago).
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(3)★★★★★OpenBSD PF (#79, 22)
Like Netfilter and ipfilter on other platforms, OpenBSD users love PF, their firewall tool. It handles network address translation, normalizing TCP/IP traffic, providing bandwidth control, and packet prioritization. It also offers some eccentric features, such as passive OS detection. Coming from the same guys who created OpenBSD, you can trust that it has been well audited and coded to avoid the sort of security holes we have seen in other packet filters. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 5.3 on May 1, 2012 (8 years, 2 months ago).
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no ratingClamAV (#80, 6)
ClamAV is a powerful AntiVirus scanner focused towards integration with mail servers for attachment scanning. It provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via the Internet. Clam AntiVirus is based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date. The project was acquired by Sourcefire in 2007. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 0.98.7 on April 28, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
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(3)★★★★½Nipper (#81, new!)
Nipper (short for Network Infrastructure Parser, previously known as CiscoParse) audits the security of network devices such as switches, routers, and firewalls. It works by parsing and analyzing device configuration file which the Nipper user must supply. This was an open source tool until its developer (Titania) released a commercial version and tried to hide their old GPL releases (including the GPLv2 version 0.10 source tarball). Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.3.
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(1)★★★NetworkMiner (#82, new!)
NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool for Windows. NetworkMiner can be used as a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool in order to detect operating systems, sessions, hostnames, open ports etc. without putting any traffic on the network. NetworkMiner can also parse pcap files for off-line analysis and to regenerate/reassemble transmitted files and certificates from pcap files. In contrast to other sniffers like Wireshark, NetworkMiner's display focuses on hosts and their attributes rather than raw packets. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 1.0 on Feb. 5, 2011 (9 years, 5 months ago).
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(2)★★★★Wikto (#83, 1)
Wikto is a tool that checks for flaws in webservers. It provides much the same functionality as Nikto but adds various interesting pieces of functionality, such as a Back-End miner and close Google integration. Wikto is written for the MS .NET environment and registration is required to download the binary and/or source code. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.1.0.0 on Dec. 14, 2008 (11 years, 6 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★P0f (#84, 51)
P0f is able to identify the operating system of a target host simply by examining captured packets even when the device in question is behind an overzealous packet firewall. P0f does not generate ANY additional network traffic, direct or indirect. No name lookups, no mysterious probes, no ARIN queries, nothing. In the hands of advanced users, P0f can detect firewall presence, NAT use, existence of load balancers, and more! Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 2.0.8 on Sept. 6, 2006 (13 years, 10 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★NoScript (#85, new!)
NoScript is an add-on for Firefox that blocks JavaScript, Java, Flash, and other plugin content (allowing you to selectively re-enable them for certain sites). It also offers cross-site scripting protection. This is mainly designed to keep web users safe, but security testers can also use the add-on to see what scripts a site is using. One caution is that the NoScript author Giorgio Maone has been caught inserting hidden code into NoScript which disabled users' ad-blocking software so that ads would still show up on the NoScript web site. He did post a lengthy apology. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.6.9.36 on Aug. 20, 2015 (4 years, 10 months ago).
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(1)★★★★Sguil (#86, 1)
Sguil (pronounced sgweel) is built by network security analysts for network security analysts. Sguil's main component is an intuitive GUI that provides access to realtime events, session data, and raw packet captures. Sguil facilitates the practice of Network Security Monitoring and event driven analysis. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.9.0 on March 28, 2014 (6 years, 3 months ago).
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(3)★★★★★Samurai Web Testing Framework (#87, new!)
The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. The CD contains the best of the open source and free tools that focus on testing and attacking websites. Samurai includes many other tools featured in this list, such as WebScarab, ratproxy, w3af, Burp Suite, and BeEF. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 3.3.2 on Jan. 22, 2016 (4 years, 5 months ago).
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(3)★★★★½Tamper Data (#88, new!)
Tamper Data is an add-on for Firefox that lets you view and modify HTTP requests before they are sent. It shows what information the web browser is sending on your behalf, such as cookies and hidden form fields. Use of this plugin can reveal web applications that trust the client not to misbehave. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 10.1.1 on Feb. 11, 2010 (10 years, 4 months ago).
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(4)★★★★★Firebug (#89, new!)
Firebug is an add-on for Firefox that provides access to browser internals. It features live editing of HTML and CSS, a DOM viewer, and a JavaScript debugger. Web application security testers appreciate the ability to see what's happening behind the scenes of the browser. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0.12 on Aug. 11, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(6)★★★★½inSSIDer (#90, new!)
inSSIDer is a wireless network scanner for Windows, OS X, and Android. It was designed to overcome limitations of NetStumbler, namely not working well on 64-bit Windows and Windows Vista. inSSIDer can find open wireless access points, track signal strength over time, and save logs with GPS records. Read 11 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.1.0 on Jan. 22, 2015 (5 years, 5 months ago).
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no ratingNemesis (#91, 33)
The Nemesis Project is designed to be a commandline-based, portable human IP stack for UNIX/Linux (and now Windows!). The suite is broken down by protocol, and should allow for useful scripting of injected packet streams from simple shell scripts. If you enjoy Nemesis, you might also want to look at Hping as they complement each other well. Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.4beta3 on June 29, 2003 (17 years ago).
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(5)★★★★★KeePass (#92, new!)
KeePass is a password manager. It stores many passwords which are unlocked by one master password. The idea is to only have to remember one high-quality password, and still be able to use unique passwords for various accounts. It has a feature to automatically fill in passwords in web forms. Read 5 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.29 on April 3, 2015 (5 years, 3 months ago).
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no ratingGDB (#93, new!)
GDB is the GNU Project's debugger. Security folks use it to analyze unknown binaries, by getting disassemblies and stepping through a program instruction by instruction. GDB can debug programs written in Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Pascal, and other languages. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 7.10 on Aug. 28, 2015 (4 years, 10 months ago).
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(3)★★★½VirusTotal (#94, new!)
VirusTotal is a web service that analyzes submitted files for known viruses and other malware. It incorporates dozens of antivirus engines from different vendors, updated regularly with new signatures. Participating antivirus vendors can get alerts when a file is not detected by their product but is by someone else's. Read 5 reviews.
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no ratingTripwire (#95, 58)
A file and directory integrity checker. Tripwire is a tool that aids system administrators and users in monitoring a designated set of files for any changes. Used with system files on a regular (e.g., daily) basis, Tripwire can notify system administrators of corrupted or tampered files, so damage control measures can be taken in a timely manner. Traditionally an open souce tool, Tripwire Corp is now focused on their commercial enterprise configuration control offerings. An open source Linux version can still be found at SourceForge. UNIX users may also want to consider AIDE, which has been designed to be a free Tripwire replacement. Or you may wish to investigate Radmind, rkhunter, or chkrootkit. Windows users may like RootkitRevealer from Sysinternals. Read 1 review.
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no ratingratproxy (#96, new!)
Ratproxy is a semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool. It is meant to complement active crawlers and manual proxies more commonly used for this task, and is optimized specifically for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing, user-initiated traffic in complex web 2.0 environments. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 1.58 beta on May 1, 2009 (11 years, 2 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★KisMAC (#97, 42)
This popular wireless stumbler for Mac OS X offers many of the features of its namesake Kismet, though the codebase is entirely different. Unlike console-based Kismet, KisMAC offers a pretty GUI and was around before Kismet was ported to OS X. It also offers mapping, Pcap-format import and logging, and even some decryption and deauthentication attacks. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.3.3 on Feb. 7, 2011 (9 years, 5 months ago).
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no ratingike-scan (#98, 45)
ike-scan is a command-line tool that uses the IKE protocol to discover, fingerprint and test IPsec VPN servers. It scans IP addresses for VPN servers by sending a specially crafted IKE packet to each host within a network. Most hosts running IKE will respond, identifying their presence. The tool then remains silent and monitors retransmission packets. These retransmission responses are recorded, displayed and matched against a known set of VPN product fingerprints. ike-scan can VPNs from manufacturers including Checkpoint, Cisco, Microsoft, Nortel, and Watchguard. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 1.9 on Jan. 24, 2007 (13 years, 5 months ago).
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(2)★★★★★NetScanTools (#99, new!)
NetScanTools is a collection of over 40 network utilities for Windows, designed with an easy user interface in mind. It includes DNS tools, a ping and port scanner, traceroute, and other utilities. It comes in bundles with more or fewer tools based on the price. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 11.30 on May 8, 2012 (8 years, 2 months ago).
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no ratingcURL (#100, new!)
curl is a command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS, FILE, IMAP, SMTP, POP3 and RTSP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, authentication, and more. libcurl provides these capabilities to other programs. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 7.44.0 on Aug. 12, 2015 (4 years, 11 months ago).
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(2)★★★½The Sleuth Kit (#101, new!)
The Sleuth Kit (previously known as TSK) is a collection of UNIX-based command line file and volume system forensic analysis tools. The file system tools allow you to examine file systems of a suspect computer in a non-intrusive fashion. Because the tools do not rely on the operating system to process the file systems, deleted and hidden content is shown. A graphical interface to the tools called Autopsy is available. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.0.1 on Nov. 13, 2012 (7 years, 7 months ago).
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(4)★★★★Websecurify (#102, new!)
Websecurify is a powerful web application security testing environment designed from the ground up to provide the best combination of automatic and manual vulnerability testing technologies. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.0.2 on Jan. 15, 2012 (8 years, 5 months ago).
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no ratingKnoppix (#103, 43)
Knoppix consists of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. Knoppix can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or as many Nmap survey takers attest, a portable security tool. For a security-specific Linux distribution see BackTrack. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 7.2.0 on June 24, 2013 (7 years ago).
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no ratingTHC Amap (#104, 85)
Amap is a great tool for determining what application is listening on a given port. Their database isn't as large as what Nmap uses for its version detection feature, but it is definitely worth trying for a 2nd opinion or if Nmap fails to detect a service. Amap even knows how to parse Nmap output files. This is yet another valuable tool from the great guys at THC. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 5.4 on April 1, 2011 (9 years, 3 months ago).
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(1)★★★★RainbowCrack (#105, 56)
The RainbowCrack tool is a hash cracker that makes use of a large-scale time-memory trade-off. A traditional brute force cracker tries all possible plaintexts one by one, which can be time consuming for complex passwords. RainbowCrack uses a time-memory trade-off to do all the cracking-time computation in advance and store the results in so-called "rainbow tables". It does take a long time to precompute the tables but RainbowCrack can be hundreds of times faster than a brute force cracker once the precomputation is finished. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.61 on April 25, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
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no ratingGrendel-Scan (#106, new!)
Grendel-Scan is an open-source web application security testing tool. It has automated testing module for detecting common web application vulnerabilities, and features geared at aiding manual penetration tests. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 1.1.
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(1)★★★★★dradis (#107, new!)
dradis is an open source framework to enable effective sharing of information among participants in a penetration test. It is a self-contained web application that provides a centralised repository of information to keep track of what has been done so far, and what is still ahead. It has plugins to read and collect the output of a variety of network scanning tools, like Nmap, Burp Suite, and Nikto. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.6.1 on Feb. 11, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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(2)★★★★Socat (#108, 37)
A utility similar to the venerable Netcat that works over a number of protocols and through a files, pipes, devices (terminal or modem, etc.), sockets (Unix, IP4, IP6 - raw, UDP, TCP), a client for SOCKS4, proxy CONNECT, or SSL, etc. It provides forking, logging, and dumping, different modes for interprocess communication, and many more options. It can be used, for example, as a TCP relay (one-shot or daemon), as a daemon-based socksifier, as a shell interface to Unix sockets, as an IP6 relay, for redirecting TCP-oriented programs to a serial line, or to establish a relatively secure environment (su and chroot) for running client or server shell scripts with network connections. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0.0-b4 on Aug. 2, 2010 (9 years, 11 months ago).
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(1)★★★★DumpSec (#109, new!)
DumpSec is a security auditing program for Microsoft Windows NT/XP/200x. It dumps the permissions (DACLs) and audit settings (SACLs) for the file system, registry, printers and shares in a concise, readable format, so that holes in system security are readily apparent. DumpSec also dumps user, group and replication information. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.8.6 on June 3, 2010 (10 years, 1 month ago).
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(4)★★★★½SAINT (#110, 19)
SAINT is a commercial vulnerability assessment tool. Like Nessus, it used to be free and open source but is now a commercial product. Unlike Nexpose, and QualysGuard, SAINT runs on Linux and Mac OS X. In fact, SAINT is one of the few scanner vendors that don't support (run on) Windows at all. Read 9 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.13 on May 18, 2012 (8 years, 1 month ago).
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(3)★★★★½NBTScan (#111, 72)
NBTScan is a program for scanning IP networks for NetBIOS name information (similar to what the Windows nbtstat tool provides against single hosts). It sends a NetBIOS status query to each address in a supplied range and lists received information in human readable form. For each responded host it lists IP address, NetBIOS computer name, logged-in user name and MAC address. The original nbtscan was written by Alla Bezroutchko. Steve Friedl has written an alternate implementation. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.5.1 on June 1, 2003 (17 years, 1 month ago).
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(2)★★★★★DirBuster (#112, new!)
DirBuster searches for hidden pages and directories on a web server. Sometimes developers will leave a page accessible, but unlinked; DirBuster is meant to find these potential vulnerabilities. This is a Java application developed by OWASP. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0-RC1 on March 3, 2009 (11 years, 4 months ago).
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(1)★★★★WinDbg (#113, new!)
WinDbg is a graphical debugger from Microsoft. It is actually just one component of the Debugging Tools for Windows package, which also includes the KD, CDB, and NTSD debuggers. Its claim to fame is debugging memory dumps produced after a crash. It can even debug in kernel mode. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 10.0.10075.9 on April 29, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
(1)★★★★★Wfuzz (#114, new!)
Wfuzz is a tool for bruteforcing Web Applications, it can be used for finding resources not linked (directories, servlets, scripts, etc), bruteforcing GET and POST parameters for different kinds of injections (SQL, XSS, LDAP, etc.), bruteforcing form parameters (user/password), fuzzing, and more. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 2.0 on Aug. 4, 2011 (8 years, 11 months ago).
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(2)★½ArcSight SIEM platform (#115, new!)
ArcSight provides a suite of tools for SIEM—security information and event management. The best-known seems to be ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM), described as the "brain" of the SIEM platform. It is a log analyzer and correlation engine designed to sift out important network events. The ESM itself is a standalone appliance, and the management programs run on Linux, Windows, AIX, and Solaris. For open-source alternatives see OSSEC HIDS and OSSIM. Read 2 reviews.
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no ratingUnicornscan (#116, 38)
Unicornscan is an attempt at a User-land Distributed TCP/IP stack for information gathering and correlation. It is intended to provide a researcher a superior interface for introducing a stimulus into and measuring a response from a TCP/IP enabled device or network. Some of its features include asynchronous stateless TCP scanning with all variations of TCP flags, asynchronous stateless TCP banner grabbing, and active/passive remote OS, application, and component identification by analyzing responses. Like Scanrand, it isn't for the faint of heart. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.4.7-2 on Dec. 20, 2007 (12 years, 6 months ago).
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no ratingStunnel (#117, 38)
The stunnel program is designed to work as an SSL encryption wrapper between remote client and local (inetd-startable) or remote servers. It can be used to add SSL functionality to commonly used inetd daemons like POP2, POP3, and IMAP servers without any changes in the programs' code. It will negotiate an SSL connection using the OpenSSL or SSLeay libraries. Review this tool.
Latest release: version 5.16 on April 19, 2015 (5 years, 2 months ago).
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no ratingSELinux (#118, new!)
Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a security enhancement to Linux implementing mandatory access control (MAC). Users and processes can be granted their least required privileges in a much more granular way than with traditional Unix access control. For example, you can define a policy to prevent your web browser from reading your SSH keys. The security model of SELinux has been ported to other operating systems; see SEBSD for FreeBSD and Project fmac for OpenSolaris. Read 2 reviews.
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(4)★★★½Brutus (#119, 42)
This Windows-only cracker bangs against network services of remote systems trying to guess passwords by using a dictionary and permutations thereof. It supports HTTP, POP3, FTP, SMB, TELNET, IMAP, NNTP, and more. No source code is available. UNIX users should take a look at THC Hydra. Read 6 reviews.
Latest release: version AET2 on Jan. 28, 2000 (20 years, 5 months ago).
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(1)★★EnCase (#120, new!)
EnCase is a suite of computer forensics software, commonly used by law enforcement. Its wide use has made it a de-facto standard in forensics. It is made to collect data from a computer in a forensically sound manner (employing checksums to help detect tampering). Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.10.05 on March 18, 2015 (5 years, 3 months ago).
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(3)★★★Wapiti (#121, new!)
Wapiti allows you to audit the security of your web applications. It performs "black-box" scans; i.e., it does not study the source code of the application but will scans the webpages of the deployed webapp, looking for scripts and forms where it can inject data. Once it gets this list, Wapiti acts like a fuzzer, injecting payloads to see if a script is vulnerable. Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.2.1 on Dec. 29, 2009 (10 years, 6 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★WebGoat (#122, new!)
WebGoat is a deliberately insecure J2EE web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons. In each lesson, users must demonstrate their understanding of a security issue by exploiting a real vulnerability in the WebGoat application. For example, in one of the lessons the user must use SQL injection to steal fake credit card numbers. The application is a realistic teaching environment, providing users with hints and code to further explain the lesson. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 5.3 RC1 on Nov. 1, 2009 (10 years, 8 months ago).
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(1)★★★★★HijackThis (#123, new!)
HijackThis inspects a computer’s browser and operating system settings to generate a log file of its current state. It can selectively remove unwanted settings and files. Its main focus is on web browser hijacking. It is a freeware utility originally written by Merijn Bellekom but now distributed by Trend Micro. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.0.5 on May 18, 2013 (7 years, 1 month ago).
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(1)★Honeyd (#124, 44)
Honeyd is a small daemon that creates virtual hosts on a network. The hosts can be configured to run arbitrary services, and their TCP personality can be adapted so that they appear to be running certain versions of operating systems. Honeyd enables a single host to claim multiple addresses on a LAN for network simulation. It is possible to ping the virtual machines, or to traceroute them. Any type of service on the virtual machine can be simulated according to a simple configuration file. It is also possible to proxy services to another machine rather than simulating them. It has many library dependencies, which can make compiling/installing Honeyd difficult. Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.5c on May 27, 2007 (13 years, 1 month ago).
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no ratingAIDE (#125, new!)
AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment) is a rootkit detector, a free replacement for Tripwire. It makes cryptographic hashes of important system files and stores them in a database. It can then make reports about which files have changed. Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.16a1 on Feb. 16, 2011 (9 years, 4 months ago).
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