Kali Linux 2019.3 Release - What's new?
* Kali Linux 2019.1 – 18th February, 2019 – The First 2019 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2018.4 – 29th October, 2018 – The Fourth 2018 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2018.3 – 27th August, 2018 – The Third 2018 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2018.2 – 30th April, 2018 – The Second 2018 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2018.1 – 6th February, 2018 – The first 2018 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2017.3 – 21st November, 2017 – The third 2017 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2017.2 – 20th September, 2017 – The second 2017 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2017.1 – 25th April, 2017 – The first 2017 Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2016.2 – 31st August, 2016 – The second Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2016.1 – 21st January, 2016 – The first Kali Rolling release. Read details here.
* Kali Linux 2.0 – 11th August, 2015 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.1.0a – 13th March, 2015.
* Kali Linux 1.1.0 – 9th Febuary, 2015 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.9a – 6th October, 2014 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.9 – 25th August, 2014 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.8 – 22nd July, 2014 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.7 – 27th May, 2014 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.6 – 9th January, 2014 – Read details here.
* Kali Linux 1.0.5 – 5th September, 2013.
* Kali Linux 1.0.4 – 25th July, 2013.
* Kali Linux 1.0.3 – 26th April, 2013.
* Kali Linux 1.0.2 – 27th March, 2013.
* Kali Linux 1.0.1 – 14th March, 2013.
* Kali Linux 1.0.0 – 13th March, 2013.
And now, Offensive Security ispleased to announce that our third release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.3, is available immediately for download. This release brings our kernel up to version 5.2.9, and includes various new features across the board with NetHunter, ARM and packages (plus the normal bugs fixes and updates). So what's new in Kali Linux 2019.1?
Tool Updates & New Packages
As always, we have our updates for all our tools, including (but not limited to):
There is a new tool (and it is included by default), amass, that has been well received in the bug bounty world.
CloudFlare Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Kali Linux is Open Source, and Cloudflare hearts Open Source – so it’s a perfect match! As a result, CloudFlare has graciously allowed us to use their content delivery network (CDN) to mirror our repository, allowing us to now distribute our content through them. A more technical breakdown can be found on their blog.
We are currently running the CloudFlare services side by side with our standard and community mirrors.
If you notice the
kali.download domain appearing on screen when you run apt update, this means you’re using CloudFlare’s services.Kali System and Network status
We now have Kali System Status page. This provides an overview of all public facing domains and allows you to check if they are responding correctly. We have included all the sites we control, as well as the community mirrors for the repositories, allowing you to see everything you could possibly use (even if you are unaware)!
Note: Our load balancer on http.kali.org should automatically detect when a mirror is not responding and redirect you to one that is. As such,
apt should always work (even if slow at times).Kali Linux Metapackages
We already announced the changes to metapackages in a previous blog post, and the Kali Linux tool listing page goes into more detail on it. However, to recap, the default toolset going forward has changed. To help with this transition, for this release only (Kali 2019.3), there is a one-off, extra image called
kali-linux-large-2019.3-amd64.iso, that contains all previous default tools.Going forward, during our release cycle, we will be evaluating which tools belong to each group:
kali-linux-default– tools we believe are essential to a penetration testerkali-linux-large– for penetration testers who have a wider set of non standard/common situationskali-linux-everything– for those who want it all (and without Internet access during the assessment)
We also noticed some packages failed to build on certain ARM architectures, which has now been fixed (allowing for more tools to be used on different platforms!).
Helper Scripts
There’s a wide range of tools in Kali Linux. Some tools are designed to be used on Linux, some are designed for Windows (and we can still use them with WINE), and some are static resources. During our recent metapackage refresh, we took the time to create a few “helper scripts”.
You may have installed a package, gone ahead and typed in the package name to run it, and the response back was
command not found. Not any more!We understood it may not have been obvious how to use them straight away. As a result, all of our static resources should now be easy to find. Just type in the package name (Such as PayloadsAllTheThings, SecLists, WebShells and Wordlists to a name a few), you’ll see a brief description, a directory listing, and then be moved to the folder.
When it comes to Windows binaries (Such as hyperion, mimikatz, and windows-privesc-check), depending on their functionality, it will now either start up WINE or, like above, hotlink you to the location.
On the subject of tool type, we have altered the location of packages related to Windows (which eagle eye readers may have spotted in the example above). These types of tools are now located in
/usr/share/windows-resources/. For example, our windows binaries used to be in /usr/share/windows-binaries/, instead, they are in /usr/share/windows-resources/binaries/.We have done this to make it easier to discover what resources can be transferred over to a Windows platform and executed directly there. Using this new location as a root path (example: http
python3 -m http.server, or samba impacket-smbserver toolz.), you can quickly share everything to the target/victim machine).For GNOME Users
If you use the default Kali image, it is (currently) using GNOME for the desktop environment. If you used the command line for a period of time, chances are you noticed it was refreshing the repositories in the background. This has now been disabled.
ARM Update
For ARM devices this release, we have added support for the PINEBOOK as well as the Gateworks Ventana machines.
The RaspberryPi kernel has been bumped to version 4.19.66, which includes support for all of the RAM on 64-bit versions of the RaspberryPi 4. The RaspberryPi Zero W has seen improvements as well.
Bluetooth firmware that was accidentally dropped has been added back in, and the
rc.local file has been fixed to properly stop dmesg spam from showing up on the first console.All of the RaspberryPi images have had their
/boot partition increased, which is required due to the size of the new kernel packages.The ODROID-C2 has been bumped to the 3.16.72 for its kernel.
All images now run
dpkg-reconfigure xfonts-base on their first boot – this will cause a bit of a slow down for the first boot, but the result is that if you use VNC to any of them, they will no longer show a blank screen.On the WSL front, we have added WSL ARM64 support, which you can find in the Windows store today.
Official Kali Linux LXD Container Image Released
LXD is a next generation system container manager. It offers a user experience similar to virtual machines but using Linux containers instead.
It is image based with pre-made images available for a wide number of Linux distributions and we are excited to announce that Kali Linux is now one of them. We are working on the documentation but would like to share the excellent article from Simos Xenitellis in which he details how to install and run Kismet in a LXD Kali container.
Setup Notes
A couple of notes when installing Kali. If you choose to install Kali in a VM (rather than downloading our pre-made image), during the setup process, it should now detect if its running in VMware or VirtualBox and install the necessary packages to give you the best experience possible. However, if you have upgraded Kali rather than doing a fresh install, and never got around to installing these packages, the process has been automated by just running
kali-setup. This program will have more functionally at a later date.If you use Kali in a VirtualBox, please ensure you allocate 32 MB or more video memory to the VM, otherwise you may now run into some “interesting” issues where the screen is frozen after login through the graphical greeter, as if the computer had crashed, except that it’s working (you could confirm it by switching to another virtual terminal). If you are affected by this problem, you might see the following message from the kernel:
[drm] Error -12 pinnning new fb, out of video mem?.How to upgrade to Kali Linux 2019.3?
Open your Kali Linux Terminal and enter this command:
apt update && apt full-upgradeFrom Kali Linux
