Now that our 2019.2 release is out, we thought we would take this opportunity to cover some of the changes and new features we have coming to Kali Linux in the following year. Normally, we only really announce things when they are ready to go public, but a number of these changes are going to impact users pretty extensively so we wanted to share them early.
Kali Linux has had support for WSL for some time, but its usefulness has been somewhat limited. This was mostly due to restrictions placed on some system calls , most importantly those revolving around networking. Furthermore, additional issues with speed, specifically I/O, were also problematic. Because of this, Kali WSL has mostly been relegated to reporting functions after an assessment is completed. A cool technology, and certainly an amazing engineering feat, but as is, it just was not that useful in the field.
Welcome to our second release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.2, which is available for immediate download. This release brings our kernel up to version 4.19.28, fixes numerous bugs, includes many updated packages, and most excitingly, features a new release of Kali NetHunter!
Kali NetHunter 2019.2 Release Thanks to the tireless contributions from the vibrant NetHunter community led by @Re4son, @binkybear, @fattire, @jmingov, @jcadduono, @Kimocoder, and @PaulWebSec, NetHunter now supports over 50 devices running all the latest Android versions, from KitKat through to Pie. To celebrate this milestone, we have released 13 new NetHunter images for the latest Android versions of our favourite devices, including:
Welcome to our first release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.1, which is available for immediate download. This release brings our kernel up to version 4.19.13, fixes numerous bugs, and includes many updated packages.
Tool Upgrades The big marquee update of this release is the update of Metasploit to version 5.0, which is their first major release since version 4.0 came out in 2011:
Running Kali on a Gem The Gemini PDA from Planet Computers is an ultra-thin, clamshell mobile device with a tactile keyboard. Sporting a 5.99" screen, QWERTY keyboard, 4G & Wi-Fi, deca-core CPU, and an Open-source bootloader that supports multi-boot, it caught our attention straight away when it popped up on Indiegogo. It is a great little pocket rocket and having a landscape orientation and hardware keyboard, is well suited for a native Kali installation with a full LXQT desktop environment.
Welcome to our fourth and final release of 2018, Kali Linux 2018.4, which is available for immediate download. This release brings our kernel up to version 4.18.10, fixes numerous bugs, includes many updated packages, and a very experimental 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 image.
New Tools and Tool Upgrades We have only added one new tool to the distribution in this release cycle but it’s a great one. Wireguard is a powerful and easy to configure VPN solution that eliminates many of the headaches one typically encounters setting up VPNs. Check out our Wireguard post for more details on this great addition.
Inspired by a recent community blog post, we have decided to add a new official way for our community to use Kali. Starting now, you can find an officially maintained Kali Linux image in the Vagrant Cloud.
What is Vagrant? From Vagrant’s website:
Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow.
One of the many useful things we can do with APT is create metapackages, which are effectively empty packages that declare a list of other packages as dependencies. Kali Linux includes metapackages for password cracking, software-defined radio, wireless, web applications, and more but if you have specific needs (like most people), it’s quick and easy to define your own metapackages, which we will show in this post.
We have been hearing a lot about WireGuard lately and with it being recently added to the Kali repos, we thought we would give it a quick try to see what all the fuss is about. All in all, we found this is a really nice and quick to configure VPN solution, and might be worth checking out.
We love it when community members come up with new ideas or interesting builds, and this one caught our attention. Jacek Kowalczyk hit us up on Twitter with a really interesting story. His approach to tweaking Kali to be specific to his needs is exactly why this feature is so important to us and we wanted to share his story more widely.