Ethical Hacking Tools and Software Every Hacker Must Know

Ethical Hackers work with a good intention to help companies and organizations secure their information. They not only provide service before the attack but even if the company falls in a critical situation.

To ensure that these white hat hackers don’t fall short of technological support, many hacking tools are available in the market. These tools are made to assist them in the process of ethical hacking. Top-level engineers and companies are behind making these tools easily accessible.

They come with various features and specialties intending to make the process more reliable and easier. Many people wonder which is the best operating system to use these tools. The answer is all of them. It depends on the expertise and familiarity of hackers entirely.

But the real question is which tool to use for ethical hacking? There are many great tools but it depends on the objective of the process and the type of target company. This list will guide you on which tools work the best according to your situation.

Ethical Hacking Tools

1. Netsparker

Netsparker is a known website hacking tool that comes with precise vulnerability discovery. It automatically finds SQL Injection, XSS, and other threats that the website may face. It needs a very minimal setup and has the best Proof-Based Scanning Technology.

Things like URL revamp rules and 404 error pages come on its radar very easily. The service is very flexible and provides almost 1000 Web application scans in a day. This is a reliable service to check website security with consistent API and global frameworks.

2. SaferVPN

The most attractive feature of this tool is a no-log VPN allowing higher security for the hackers. It provides indispensable service by accessing multiple geographies, identifying browsing behavior, and anonymizing files.

It can easily coordinate with 2000+ workers across landmasses. Operating systems like Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux are compatible with this tool. It is the best choice to check the security of business spread globally.

3. Acunetix

This tool is 100% automatic in verifying the applications and creating a detailed report on them. It checks HTML5, JavaScript, and Single-page applications for weaknesses and loopholes. The feature allows it to identify 4500+ extra weaknesses including 1200 WordPress core weaknesses.

Its scalability is quite high and very fast, which follows layered analysis for the system. It is compatible with On-Premises and as a Cloud solution. There is continuous coordination with WAFs and Issue Trackers during the process.

4. Burp Suite

This web application security testing tool comes with various inbuilt features to assist the users. It starts with basic mapping, then analysis and finally identifying the weaknesses. It allows littering of programs using Login Sequence Recorder. The process is automatic and provides consistent reports that are 100% accurate.

5. Ettercap

These tools assist in network security analysis with many ethical hacking features. The tools are ideal for sniffing SSH association and HTTP SSL. This allows the identification of connectivity information at all times.

6. Aircrack

This tool is best for scanning wireless connections using WEP WPA and WPA 2 encryption keys. It is compatible with many operating systems. Its advanced tracking pace makes it ideal for WEP word reference attacks and Fragmentation attacks.

7. Angry IP Scanner

This is an open-source cross-platform tool for examining IP addresses and ports. It veins by scanning local networks and maintains reports on them in many formats. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.

8. GFI LanGuard

This is known as the “virtual security consultant” for website security. It maintains a record of every device and identifies how each of them affects the network. It fixes those vulnerabilities centrally to avoid threats.

9. Savvius

It is a well-known cyber forensic software to reduce security threats with clarity. It automatically captures network data for investigation. The analysis is quite prompt in terms of using the most advanced technology. It maintains a report on all weaknesses for easy management.

10. QualysGuard

It is a global tool known best for scanning the vulnerability of online cloud solutions. It doesn’t require any hardware and comes with an end-to-end solution for various aspects. There is real-time scanning and responding to potential threats.

11. Hashcat

Password cracking capability is the central feature of this tool. Users can easily recover their passwords and check their security using this tool. It is compatible with multiple platforms and devices. It acts as an integrated thermal watchdog that detects loopholes.

12. Rainbow Crack

This is also a password-cracking tool that uses a time-memory tradeoff algorithm. It is compatible with Windows OS and Linux and allows computation on a multi-core processor.
It supports a rainbow table in a compact file format.

13. L0phtCrack/LC4

This tool is for auditing passwords over local systems and networks. The multi-core GPU allows maximum optimization of hardware. It is customizable and has automatic features for organization-wide passwords. It also fixes the vulnerabilities by handling the passwords.

14. IKECrack

This is an open-source authentication tool that uses cryptography for more accurate results. It sends proposals to clients on behalf of the users using DH public key, unique number, and an ID. businesses dealing with Cryptography tasks should use this tool.

15. Nmap

This Kali Linux tool is famous for collecting information about the host, IP address, OS detection, and more. It stops the authorized interface and comes with 171 new scripts and 20 libraries. It is comparatively faster in scanning security and follows TLS/SSL regulations.

16. Metasploit Framework

This is an ideal tool that provides a penetration testing framework with 8 modules. It is good for checking vulnerabilities and auditing the entire network. It is compatible with Windows and Linux OS.

17. SQLMap

Automatic SQL vulnerability detection is the highlight of this tool. It is an open-source tool that allows a direct connection with the database. It uses hash formats for identifying passwords with dictionary-based attacks.

18. Medusa

The main highlight of this tool is online brute-force and parallel password-cracking. It allows remote authentication with thread-based parallel testing. It is highly efficient as it can perform testing against multiple hosts simultaneously. And above all this, it takes into consideration multiple protocols.

19. Cain & Abel

This ethical tool is famous for its password recovery feature in Microsoft Windows. It automatically scans weaknesses and fixes them to avoid threats. It has host-centric functionalities with advanced troubleshoot issues.

20. Nessus

This ethical hacking tool is famous for evaluating vulnerability and penetration testing. It is available for free for non-business users. The tool comes with services like web scanning, mobile scanning, and even cloud scanning. It is compatible with Windows and Linux and has automatic scanning capabilities.

21. Nikto

This is a web scanning tool that identifies many problems inside the software. It is known for checking version-specific issues across 270 servers. This is an open-source tool that can identify over 6400 CGIs or files. It also works on insecure plug-ins and misconfigured files.

22. Kismet

This tool collects packets hidden in the network, becoming ideal for testing wireless networks. It is like a sniffer that uses raw monitoring to detect security issues. It is most compatible with Linux and Windows.

23. NetStumbler

It is known for preventing wardriving on windows. This is by identifying access points in a network configuration that may be interfering. It also measures the strength of signals received from unauthorized access points.

24. EtherPeek

This tool works best for simplifying network analysis in a network. It is a small-sized tool that can sniff packets from network traffic. It follows the regulation of various protocols like AppleTalk, IP, ARP, etc.

25. SuperScan

This tool is for network administrators to scan TCP ports using any IP range. It can collect responses from hosts and modify the port list and descriptions. This includes merging them or customizing them according to the situation.

26. LANguard Network Security Scanner

This tool scans all machines under a network and gets information about every node. It also scans the HTML format and registry issues to detect any potential threat. The user can list logs and addresses for each device.

27. ToneLoc

Tone Locator is a very old tool known for scanning a list of telephone numbers. This canning is done to identify user accounts and modems. Hackers can use this to find entry points and avoid unauthorized access.

28. Traceroute NG

This tool analyses network paths using the command line interface. It comes with features for both TCP and ICMP path analysis. Users can also receive notifications in case of changes in path. There is continuous network scanning with the support of both IP4 and IPV6.

29. IronWASP

This open-source software tests web application vulnerability. The users create their custom security scanners for more effective results. It maintains a record of the Login sequence in HTML and RTF formats. It has features to check over 25 types of web vulnerabilities.

30. John The Ripper

This password cracking tool is a creation of an Operating system. It uses hash types for detecting passwords and checking their strength. It allows dictionary attacks that are customizable according to the user.

31. Wireshark

This tool is to check if the companies are abiding by the protocols. It also analyzes packets both online and offline. It uses GUI or TShark utility to perform tasks efficiently. Many protocols use it for decryption.

32. Wapiti

It is an open-source tool that uses a command-line scanner for finding loopholes in web applications. It is useful for identifying several types of attacks like – XSS attacks, SQL injections, Server-side request forgery, etc.

33. Canvas

This tool comes with almost 800 exploits for testing networks. The entire process of testing is automatically using comprehensive and reliable frameworks. It can easily download passwords and modify files. It also allows remote network exploitation.

34. Fiddler

It is a web proxy tool known for debugging web traffic on any system. It records the data during transmission. This is mainly to intercept and decrypt HTTPS traffic. The reason is to debug it later and see how that is affecting the network in real-time.

35. Reaver

This tool uses brute force Wifi attack techniques to find vulnerabilities in wireless connections. It is a bit of a longer process when it comes to getting the results. But it is most reliable for finding how well-configured the router-level Wifi security is.

36. Maltego

This tool is mainly for gathering intel during the initial stage of hacking. It has a Graphical User Interface that can analyze approximately 10.000 entities per graph. It allows sharing data in real-time and correlates it according to the graphics generator.

37. SQLNinja

This is also a Kali Linux tool known for exploiting web apps using SQL servers. It is written in Perl language and has Test/ Verbose modes. It comes with a fingerprint remote database mode and can perform brute force attacks.

Conclusion

These were some of the best ethical hacking tools available in the market. Many of them have pro versions that are even more accurate and reliable. For small businesses with a lower budget, many of these tools are also free of cost. It is the call of hackers which tools to use to the demand of the situation. It is advisable to look at all aspects and then make the final decision.