10 Essential network security testing tools

Security vulnerabilities appear to be commonplace news, such as the disruption or infiltration of network security in a company or government department. If you're a security professional, it's time to be more proactive in dealing with security issues. Over the years, many people have listed the best penetration testing and network security assessment tools, but I want to use a different approach to enumerate the best test tools by category. Needless to say, here are the 10 essential penetration testing tools I've listed.

1. Bootable Linux version: Backtrack is one of the most mobile bootable Linux versions, with the latest security tools and applications. Backtrack allows you to load a pure native hacker environment, which can then be used to perform penetration testing. The so-called Live CD/DVD or bootable release, refers to a fully configured operating system that allows users to experience and evaluate an operating system without having to install it to the hardware. You can run this operating system from a live DVD, a USB disk, or a virtual machine.

2. Malware Analysis Toolkit: VirusTotal and Jotti are 2 sites you can't miss. If you're a penetration tester, you're sure to encounter a lot of potential malware. Although you can rely on a kind of anti-virus software, but probably 10 kinds, 20 kinds are not enough! Sometimes, it is possible that one anti-virus software does not detect a virus, while another antivirus software marks it as malicious software. Sites like virustotal.com and jotti.org can help you scan malicious files or URLs with a variety of antivirus products. This allows you to quickly and easily detect whether different antivirus vendors will mark the software as malicious software.

3. Vulnerability Detection framework: Metasploit is a vulnerability detection framework that every penetration tester can not miss. The vulnerability detection framework is an environment that creates or executes a vulnerability code for a specified attack target. Metasploit has a 3-step vulnerability detection step: Select the vulnerability, configure the attack payload, and execute the attack.

4. World-class port Scanning Tool: Nmap is a very good port scanning application. It also supports both Linux and Windows platforms, either from commands or from the graphical user interface (GUI) to perform tasks. It has a variety of detection computer network functions, such as TCP Scan, UDP scan and operation system identification. This is a tool that all penetration testers cannot miss.

5. Network Traffic Analysis tool: Wireshark is a network protocol analysis tool that is suitable for Windows and Linux. It is also a well-known tool for packet analysis. As a penetration tester, you'll need to check your network traffic, and there's no better tool than Wireshark. This tool has won multiple awards over the past few years, and it is the best way to observe TCP/IP exception traffic. In addition, it is well suited for activities that analyze other security tools.

6. SQL Injection Attack Test tool: Acunetix can be used to test cross-site scripting attacks, SQL injection attacks, and other common Web vulnerability attacks on Web sites and Web applications. As long as you think about how many web-based applications you have, you understand why penetration testers can't miss this tool.

7. Web Application Test Tool: The Burp Suite is a complete toolkit designed to test Web application security. It can act as a proxy server, web crawler, intrusion tool, and forwarding tool, and can also automatically send requests.

8. Hacker tools like the Swiss Army Knife: Cain and Abel have the functions of password cracking, exhaustive, sniffing, address Resolution protocol/dns pollution. The real advantage of Cain and Abel is its rich function.

9. World-class encryption tool: TrueCrypt is an open source encryption package that supports Windows, Linux, and OS X. Although some people think it is not a hacker tool, but I think most penetration testers need this tool. After all, there must be some notes, records, and reports that enumerate known vulnerabilities on your computer. Do you really feel relieved not to encrypt this information?

10. Tools for loading multiple operating systems: VMware. As a penetration tester, you will need to run multiple operating systems, and VMware can help you run multiple operating systems easily. You can use these virtual systems to perform tests, install bootable open source operating systems (such as backtrack), and support applications that run only on specific operating systems. VMware has both a free version and a paid version.