In this article, I will share the Top 3 best application for penetration testers. We will see what a Penetration Tester must have in his Pentesting Kit. Just follow along and make sure you don't miss anything. All the listed tools here are preinstalled in Kali Linux, but if you don't run on Kali, I will drop a link for each of them.
NMAP
NMAP as short abbreviation for Network Mapper, an open source command line tool used for live network scanning, NMAP detects live host, open ports, vulnerabilities, operating system of the machine, services running as well as the version of the operating system and the services running in the application or machine.
It is widely used in Penetration Testing, very popular and easy to use tool with very simple commands.
NMAP supports additional options for a multiple hosts or a wide range Network, and it also allows you to run a specific commands that performs a selected work. It provide a very useful information about the machine or application which can be used to further the attack.
It is also provide a free and open source Graphical User Interface (GUI) Based version, ZenMap which is cross plaform that is beginner friendly, but I recommend using the command line version because GUI Based applications are mostly preferred by script kiddies.
Download Link: https://nmap.org/download
Burp Suite
Burp Suite is a GUI Based web hacking tool, it helps in automation and detection of web application vulnerabilities, Burp Suite is cross plaform that offers but Community and Professional edition. It is first set as a proxy from a browser, which helps in intercepting the browsers traffic before forward to the server.
Burp can be used to detect hidden directories, brute Force usernames and passwords, manipulate requests, change or add custom header to browser request before they are sent to the remote server.
Burp has a very awesome academy for it's beginners to learn various ways to analyze and manipulate requests, and lessons are pathed based on vulnerabilities. You can join the PortSwigger Academy to learn more about the application.
The professional edition can save projects for future use.
Download Link: https://portswigger.net/burp/communitydownload
Metasploit
Metasploit, a command line tool that is used mainly for attacking and exploiting machines. Metasploit is my best tool in the whole Penetration testing scope. It has modules, payloads, encoders and exploits.
Metasploit have a whole bunch of exploits for Android, Windows, Phone and many more. More suprisingly it has encorders, that is payloads can be encoded to avoid being detected by Anti Viruses.
A Penetration Tester can generate a payloads, set up a meterpreter listeners in Metasploit and find a way to inject the payload into victims machine, once the payload is executed, it connects back to the attacker (in our case Penetration Tester) and create a meterpreter session. Once the session is created, boom he has taken over your machine. That is part of the power of metasploit.
Metasploit exploit web servers, email servers, operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, Solaris) and many more. It does have a GUI version named Armitage that is less used by the Penetration Testers.
It can also use Postgressql database to import NMAP scan result. A combination of NMAP & Metasploit results in a very wonderful and interesting Job.
Download link: https://www.metasploit.com/download
Thanks for reading, and take a time to play with the PortSwigger Academy Labs to learn more on web hacking.