The Raspberry Pi 5 has a quad core 2.4GHz processor, with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, depending on model. Kali Linux runs on a microSD card.

By default, the Kali Linux Raspberry Pi 5 image contains the kali-linux-default metapackage similar to most other platforms. If you wish to install extra tools please refer to our metapackages page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the details of downloading and validating a Kali Linux image, or for using that image to create a bootable device, it’s strongly recommended that you refer to the more detailed procedures described in the specific articles on those subjects.

To install a pre-built image of the standard build of Kali Linux on your Raspberry Pi 5, follow these instructions:

1. Get a fast microSD card with at least 16GB capacity. Class 10 cards are highly recommended.
2. Download and validate our preferred Kali Raspberry Pi 5 image from the downloads area. The process for validating an image is described in more detail on Downloading Kali Linux.
3. Use the dd utility to image this file to your microSD card (same process as making a Kali USB.

In our example, we assume the storage device is located at /dev/sdb. Do not simply copy these value, change this to the correct drive path.

$ xzcat kali-linux-2024.1-raspberry-pi-arm64.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

This process can take a while, depending on your PC, your microSD’s speed, and the size of the Kali Linux image.

Once the dd operation is complete, boot up the Raspberry Pi 5 with the microSD plugged in.

You should be able to log in to Kali.

To build external modules against the kernel, most instructions will state that you need to install header packages. This is not the case on the Raspberryi Pi 5 image, they are already included and are not a part of a package.
In order to make the headers usable however, you do need to run the following commands.

kali@kali:~$ cd /usr/src/kernel
kali@kali:/usr/src/kernel/$ sudo git clean -fdx && sudo make bcm2711_defconfig && sudo make modules_prepare

To build external modules that are from the Kali package repository, as an example realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms you need to tell it to install without also installing recommended packages.

kali@kali:~$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms

Kali on Raspberry Pi 5 Headless - Tips and Tricks

You can add a wpa_supplicant.conf file to the first partition of the microSD card to connect to a wireless network.

You can create this file on another Linux system by running wpa_passphrase YOURNETWORK > wpa_supplicant.conf. It will prompt you for the wireless network’s password. You can add the password to the command as you run it, but keep in mind that if you do, your wifi network password will be in your user’s shell history.

If you want to customize the Kali Raspberry Pi 5 image, including changes to the packages being installed, changing the desktop environment, increasing or decreasing the image file size or generally being adventurous, check out the Kali-ARM Build-Scripts repository on GitLab, and follow the README.md file’s instructions. The script to use is raspberry-pi5.sh (64-bit).