We see news related to hacking almost every day, making it clear that hacking is a major problem worldwide. To protect your system against hacking, we use ethical hacking tools. The ethical hacker finds vulnerabilities in the network, discusses them with the client, and then fixes them. However, in hacking, hackers hack the sensitive information of the network without obtaining permission.
Furthermore, ethical hackers or white-hat hackers are legal. These hackers are responsible for protecting the organisation’s information from hackers, identifying the vulnerabilities, preparing a report, and informing about the weaknesses of the software and hardware vendors. Ethical hackers are important for an organisation because the information is valuable, and if a hacker hacks the information, it can lead to the organisation’s loss.
Best 40+ Ethical Hacking Tools
Here are some of the best ethical hacking tools that are beneficial for ethical hackers to find vulnerabilities and fix them. Let’s check them out:
1. Nmap(Network Mapper)
2. Nikto
3. Recon-ng
4. Wireshark
5. Metasploit
6. Nessus
7. njRAT
8. John the Ripper
9. HashCat
10. Acunetix
11. Fortify WebInspect
12. Cain & Abel
13. Intruder
14. GFI LanGuard
15. Kismet
16. NetStumbler
17. Acunetix
18. Netsparker
19. Aircrack-Ng
20. Wireshark
21. OpenVAS
22. SQLMap
23. Ettercap
24. Maltego
25. Burp Suite
26. John the Ripper
27. Angry IP Scanner
28. SolarWinds Security Event Manager
29. Traceroute NG
30. LiveAction
31. QualysGuard
32. WebInspect
33. Hashcat
34. L0phtCrack
35. Rainbow Crack
36. IKECrack
37. Sboxr
38. Medusa
39. Cain and Abel
40. Zenmap
1. Nmap
Nmap is among the best ethical hacking tools for scanning the network and finding vulnerabilities. It is based on Linux Unix and was made to operate network systems. Moreover, the main work of Nmap is to find out the network’s hosts and services. It is a command-line tool that is also available for Windows. It creates a network map that finds all the hosts connected to the system.
2. Nikto
Nikto is a web server scanner that identifies whether the server is outdated, such as files, CGIs, and more. The best feature of Nikto is that it is an open-source tool. It also scans the webservers and finds over 6,400 CGIs, files, and plugins. Furthermore, one of Nikto’s main jobs is to find corrupt or dangerous files that hackers can easily find. Besides its scanning abilities, it also checks the apps or links not working in the system.
3. Recon-ng
Recon-ng is one of the most popular ethical hacking tools. Its features include collecting information from open source, reducing time, containing different tools and database interactions, and more. Furthermore, its framework is written in Python and has important features dealing with databases, collecting all the information in a single place. It is one of the most used tools by ethical hackers.
4. Wireshark
Wireshark is used to hack and find the weaknesses of the system. It inspects a large number of protocols and analyses the data packets. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy for ethical hackers to use. It allows you to export the results in files like CSV, PostScript, Plaintext, and XML. One of the best features of Wireshark is that it performs offline analysis. The packets of tools are made with color code.
5. Metasploit
Metasploit features a remote machine; ethical hackers run tests on this machine and catch the vulnerable files. The tool also provides a 14-day free trial. It features cross-platform support and a Ruby-based tool. It is also helpful in enabling the payloads and automatically deletes the infected system. The GUI setting provides a blind and reverse shell. It allows ethical hackers to execute the exploit codes.
6. Nessus
Nessus is one of the most used ethical hacking tools. It is popular because of its vulnerability scanning feature. It detects misconfiguration, weak passwords, system vulnerabilities, and more. Nessus provides detailed reports to the users. It creates configurable reports in different formats. Moreover, the offline mode allows you to complete the analysis of intelligent vulnerability assessment by updating the plugins.
7. SQLMap
SQLMap is a vulnerability testing tool that uses SQL injection. It allows users to obtain the data from the SQL database. It has a powerful detection engine that supports arbitrary commands. Furthermore, it supports MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and more. It also supports a half-dozen SQL injection techniques. The tool runs the operating system commands.
Bottom Line
Ethical hacking is beneficial for organisations’ network security in discovering vulnerabilities. To find them out, ethical hacking tools play an important role. These tools not only find vulnerabilities but also provide solutions to strengthen files. They are easily available on the internet and come in freemium versions. Ethical hacking tools include Network Scanning, Vulnerability Scanning, Password Cracking, Exploitation, and more—spoofing Tools.
Also Read About: Top Cybersecurity Tools to Safeguard Your Digital World