10 Best Ethical Hacking Tools You Must Know!

Ethical hacking is a popular form of penetration testing in which ethical hackers attempt to gain unauthorized access to a computer network or system. It can be done remotely, locally, or on-site. The main objective of such testing is to identify vulnerabilities in computer systems, web applications, servers, and networks that could be exploited by attackers.

Further, various tools are available in the market for ethical hacking. Some of them are open source, while others are commercial solutions.

Following is a handpicked list of the 10 best hacking tools, with their salient features and official website links to download. The list includes open-source as well as paid software.

1. Aircrack-ng

Aircrack-ng is the most popular Wi-Fi password cracker. It was developed by Adrien Guinet and is open source, meaning it’s available to everyone who wants to use it. The hack tool works on Windows, Linux, macOS systems, Android phones, and tablets.

Aircrack-ng uses a combination of different tools like aircrack-ng (which is used for wireless card authentication), airmon-ng (for wireless monitor mode), and airodump (for raw network data).

2. Acunetix

Acunetix is a fully automated ethical hacking solution that mimics a hacker to keep one step ahead of malicious intruders. The web application security scanner accurately scans HTML5, JavaScript, and single-page applications. It can audit complex, authenticated web apps and issues compliance and management reports on various web and network vulnerabilities.

3. Nmap

Nmap, or Network Mapper, is one of the most popular tools in an ethical hacker’s arsenal. Nmap is a free and open-source utility for network discovery and security auditing. Nmap is used to explore networks, thus helping to ensure they are secure.

Nmap has been around since 1996, but it’s still one of the most popular tools in ethical hacking circles because it can detect security vulnerabilities while scanning your local network. It sends out probes (small packets) across the target device’s ports or subnet using UDP Port numbers 1–65535. These packets contain information about what type of operating system you’re running, which ports are open/closed at each IP address, what kind of firewall your target device has installed on its internal network interface card (IC), etc.

4. SQLMap

SQLmap is an open-source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws, taking over database servers and other information stored in them. It comes with a variety of features that help in the exploitation of SQL injection flaws on websites.

It has many tools that include:

• An automated tool for finding XSS vulnerabilities on web applications by using regex-based techniques to find potential injection points within the codebase
• A collection of exploits for various types of vulnerabilities
• The ability to create new payloads (exploits) from scratch or leverage existing ones written by other users

This makes it one of the best ethical hacking tools out there!

5. John The Ripper

John The Ripper is another popular cracking tool used in many Linux distros. It’s a fast password cracker and can be used on most operating systems. John the Ripper supports several types of hashes, including MD5, SHA-512, and others. It can also be used to recover passwords from many different file types (including web forms).

6. Intruder

Intruder is a fully automated scanner that identifies cybersecurity flaws in your digital estate and assists in mitigating the threats. It’s the ideal complement to your collection of ethical hacking instruments.

With more than 9,000 security scans available, Intruder gives businesses of all sizes access to enterprise-grade vulnerability detection. Its security audits involve finding configuration errors, missing security updates, and major web application problems like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

Designed by experienced security professionals, Intruder takes care of much of the hassle of vulnerability management so that you can focus on what truly matters. You won’t have to worry about it because it prioritizes results based on context and actively scans your systems for the most recent vulnerabilities, saving you time. Along with Slack & Jira, Intruder also integrates with major cloud providers.

7. Metasploit

Metasploit is a handy tool for security researchers, infosec professionals, and hackers to find security loopholes in the system or application. It has a large community of users and developers who contribute to it.

Metasploit is an open-source project that allows you to create exploits (shortcuts) by modifying existing code or writing your own exploit code from scratch. The best part about Metasploit is its ability to automatically scan your target operating system and identify its vulnerabilities, so you don’t have to manually search through them all yourself!

8. Wireshark

Wireshark is perhaps one of the best open-source packet analyzers available today, allowing you to examine network traffic. It can also create secure tunnels between remote computers, somewhat akin to VPNs.

Wireshark can analyze TCP/IP network traffic and display it in a human-readable format. The tool was originally developed by Gerald Combs as a free program he released on his website in 1995. Since then, it has become one of the most popular tools for network security specialists and beginners alike.

9. nbtscan

nbtscan helps ethical hackers to detect NetBIOS name information from Windows systems on a local or remote network and also has a stealth scan mode that is useful for penetration testing.

nbtscan stands for Network-Based Time Sensitive Network Scan, which means that it uses the timestamp of all packets being sent over the network to determine how long they took to travel through the line. This information helps ethical hackers determine what type of traffic is going through each port and, therefore, which hosts are connected at any given time (for example, web server, email server, etc.).

10. Ettercap

Ettercap is a free and open-source suite for man-in-the-middle attacks. It can be used to sniff out passwords and other sensitive information and even inject malicious code into an established software session.

Ettercap is one of the most potent tools in ethical hacking because it allows you to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on LANs by injecting malicious code into an established software session. This means that instead of just monitoring traffic from your computer, you can inject your own commands into any application running on the computer or over its network connection.

Final Thoughts

These hacking tools will help ethical hackers to hack into networks, detect security flaws and potentially exploit the system. They can also gain access to remote computers by creating a fake network tunnel.

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