My Journey: From Windows to Learning Kali Linux
Many years ago, I was at the stage of wondering which career path I should pursue. At the time, I already knew I had like Information Technology, especially I enjoy working with computers. My fascination of technology was ever growing, however I was only proficient in using the Microsoft Windows operating system. At the beginning of my journey in Information Security and Cybersecurity, I was introduced to many concepts, tools and techniques to perform security auditing such penetration testing on a target’s network and systems. At this time, I learnt a lot of tools and utilities for Windows, but I was introduced to the infamous Backtrack operating system (www.backtrack-linux.org) which comprised of many tools for performing penetration testing and security auditing.
A little history on Backtrack. The Backtrack operating system was developed and maintained by two organizations, these were Auditor Security Collection and Whax back in the year 2006. At the time, Backtrack was based on the popular Linux flavor operating system, Ubuntu. Being Linux-based provided many opportunities for a pentester, one of its benefit was its support to boot from a Live-CD and Live USB bootable media. However, the latest version of the Backtrack operating system was Backtrack 5 in 2011 until the project was later achieved. In 2012, the new generation operating system and the now successor of Backtrack was announced, this is known as Kali Linux (www.kali.org), built from the ground-up, restructured and maintained by the team at Offensive Security (www.offensive-security.com). In March 2013, Kali Linux was officially released to the public.
Back to my story, being a Microsoft Windows user for so long prior to my cybersecurity journey, it was quite difficult to learn and understand the Linux operating system. Many persons at the time had given negative feedback on Linux, this was quite strange. I later realized, things are sometimes difficult at the beginning, especially having to learn something new and not understand it fully. This is the challenge a lot of persons usually face when starting to learn Linux for the first time after using another operating system (OS) for a long time.
I had done a lot of research, read blogs and tutorials and visit the University of YouTube (www.youtube.com) to learn how awesome and amazing the Linux operating system can be. This brings me to the point of discussing the benefits of using the Kali Linux operating system as your preferred penetration testing Linux distro (distribution).
The Kali Linux operating system is built on Debian and consist of over 300 pre-installed tools ranging from reconnaissance to exploitation and even forensics. The Kali Linux operating system has been designed not only for security professionals but additionally, IT Administration and even network security professionals. The best part, Kali Linux is free.
Within Kali, there are many popular tools which are currently used in the industry such as NMap (Network Mapper), Aircrack-ng, Metasploit Exploitation Framework and many more. Additionally, Kali Linux can be installed on a virtual machine, local disk drive, bootable USB flash drive, Raspberry Pi and a lot more devices. The deployment and usage of the operating system is very flexible and is only limited one’s imaginations.
If you would like to learn more about Kali Linux, be sure to check out my book, Learn Kali Linux 2019: