Kali Linux 2017.1 is arrived, more power for password-cracking with cloud GPUs

Kali Linux 2017.1 rolling release was announced, the popular distro comes with a set of significant updates and features.

The popular Kali Linux distribution has a new weapon in its hacking arsenal, it can use cloud GPUs for password cracking.

Kali Linux is the most popular distribution in the hacking community, it is a Debian-based distro that includes numerous hacking and forensics tools.

This week, the Kali development team has included new images optimized for GPU-using instances in Azure and Amazon Web Services. The images will improve the password cracking abilities of the Kali Linux distro giving it more power for brute-force attacks exploiting the GPUs computational power.

“Due to the increasing popularity of using cloud-based instances for password cracking, we decided to focus our efforts into streamlining Kali’s approach. We noticed that Amazon’s AWS P2-Series and Microsoft’s Azure NC-Series allow pass-through GPU support so we made corresponding AWS and Azure images of Kali that support CUDA GPU cracking out of the box. You can check out our Cracking in the Cloud with CUDA GPUs post we released a few weeks back for more information.” states the official announcement.

Now is you want to test your password against brute-force attacks you can download the GPU-enhanced images and run in cloud services, the bad news is that this means that also black hats have a new powerful weapon in their hands.

The new Kali Linux, version 2017.1, also adds support for Realtek’s RTL8812AU wireless chipsets, it is a very useful feature because these chipsets are used by major modem-makers like Belkin, D-Link, and TP-Link.

“A while back, we received a feature request asking for the inclusion of drivers for RTL8812AU wireless chipsets. These drivers are not part of the standard Linux kernel, and have been modified to allow for injection. Why is this a big deal? This chipset supports 802.11 AC, making this one of the first drivers to bring injection-related wireless attacks to this standard, and with companies such as ALFA making the AWUS036ACH wireless cards, we expect this card to be an arsenal favorite.” continues the announcement.

The driver can be installed using the following commands:

apt-get update

apt install realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms

Reading the Kali Linux Bug Tracker List we can notice the new support for the OpenVAS 9 vulnerability scanner.

Enjoy it!

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Kali Linux, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.