Setting Up Your Lab with Kali Linux

Preparation is the key to everything; it becomes even more important when working on a penetration testing project, where you get a limited amount of time for reconnaissance, scanning, and exploitation. Eventually, you can gain access and present a detailed report to the customer. Each penetration test that you conduct will be different in nature and may require a different approach from the tests that you conducted earlier. Tools play a major role in penetration testing. So, you need to prepare your toolkit beforehand and have hands-on experience with all of the tools that you will need to execute the test.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• An overview of Kali Linux and changes from the previous version
• The different ways of installing Kali Linux
• Virtualization versus installation on physical hardware
• A walk-through and configuration of important tools in Kali Linux
• Vulnerable web applications and virtual machines to set up a testing lab