Best Penetration Testing Tools for Linux of 2025

Assess your cybersecurity measures against genuine threats. Kroll offers top-tier penetration testing services that combine cutting-edge threat intelligence, extensive experience from numerous cybersecurity evaluations conducted annually, and a skilled team of certified professionals. This forms the basis of our advanced and adaptable strategy.

Invicti (formerly Netsparker) dramatically reduces your risk of being attacked. Automated application security testing that scales like none other. Your team's security problems grow faster than your staff. Security testing automation should be integrated into every step in your SDLC. Automate security tasks to save your team hundreds of hours every month. Identify the critical vulnerabilities and then assign them to remediation. Whether you are running an AppSec, DevOps or DevSecOps program, help security and development teams to get ahead of their workloads. It's difficult to prove that you are doing everything possible to reduce your company's risk without full visibility into your apps, vulnerabilities and remediation efforts. You can find all web assets, even those that have been forgotten or stolen. Our unique dynamic + interactive (DAST+ IAST) scanning method allows you to scan the corners of your apps in a way that other tools cannot.

Security Reporter serves as a comprehensive platform for pentest reporting and collaboration, streamlining every phase of the pentesting process. By automating essential components, it enables security teams to boost their productivity and deliver actionable insights. The platform is equipped with an array of features such as customizable reports, assessments, in-depth analytics, and smooth integrations with various tools. This capability allows for a consolidated source of truth, which accelerates remediation efforts and enhances the effectiveness of security services and strategies. Reduce the time spent on research and the repetitive tasks related to security assessments and reporting by utilizing Security Reporter. You can swiftly document findings through templates or by referencing previous discoveries. Engaging with clients is a breeze, as users can comment on findings, organize retests, and facilitate discussions with ease. With integrations surpassing 140 tools, users can take advantage of unique analytics and a multilingual feature, enabling the generation of reports in multiple languages. This versatility ensures that communication remains clear and effective across diverse teams and stakeholders.

Acunetix is the market leader for automated web application security testing and is the preferred tool for many Fortune 500 customers. Acunetix can detect and report on a wide range of web application vulnerabilities. Acunetix's industry-leading crawler fully supports HTML5/JavaScript and Single-page applications. This allows auditing of complex, authenticated apps. Acunetix is the only technology that can automatically detect out of-band vulnerabilities. It is available online as well as on-premise. Acunetix includes integrated vulnerability management capabilities to help enterprises manage, prioritize and control all types of vulnerability threats. These features are based on business criticality. Acunetix is compatible with popular Issue Trackers, WAFs, and is available online on Windows, Linux, and Online

Modern software development must be as fast as the business. The modern AppSec toolbox lacks integration, which creates complexity that slows down software development life cycles. Contrast reduces the complexity that hinders today's development teams. Legacy AppSec uses a single-size-fits all approach to vulnerability detection and remediation that is inefficient, costly, and expensive. Contrast automatically applies the most efficient analysis and remediation technique, greatly improving efficiency and effectiveness. Separate AppSec tools can create silos that hinder the collection of actionable intelligence across an application attack surface. Contrast provides centralized observability, which is crucial for managing risks and capitalizing upon operational efficiencies. This is both for security and development teams. Contrast Scan is a pipeline native product that delivers the speed, accuracy and integration required for modern software development.

This integrated solution can perform active, passive, and agent-based assessments. It also allows for flexibility in evaluating risk according to each business. SAINT's remarkable, flexible, and scalable scanning capabilities make it stand out from other solutions in this market. SAINT has partnered up with AWS to allow its customers to benefit from AWS's efficient scanning. SAINT also offers Windows scanning agents for subscribers. Security teams can easily schedule scans, configure them with a lot of flexibility, and fine-tune their settings with advanced options.

Caido is an advanced web security toolkit for pentesters and bug bounty hunters. It's also a great solution for security teams that need a flexible and efficient way to test web applications. Caido includes a powerful interceptor proxy for capturing HTTP requests and manipulating them, replay functionality to test endpoints and automation tools to handle large-scale workflows. Its sitemap visualisation provides a clear picture of web application structures and helps users map and navigate complicated targets. HTTPQL allows users to filter and analyze traffic efficiently, while a no-code workflow and a plugin system allow for easy customizations to meet specific testing needs. Caido is built on a flexible Client/Server architecture that allows seamless access from anywhere. Its project-management system makes it easy to switch between targets, and eliminates the need to manually handle files. This keeps workflows organized.

Phishing Club is a self-hosted phishing simulation platform built for modern security needs. It provides organizations complete control over their phishing infrastructure through a single binary deployment. Key differentiators: - Self-hosted architecture ensuring full data sovereignty - Multi-stage phishing campaigns with defense evasion - Automated domain and TLS certificate management - Flexible delivery through SMTP or API integration - No artificial limits on campaigns or recipients The platform is designed for red teams requiring advanced capabilities, privacy-focused companies running phishing simulations, and security providers offering phishing services. All data remains on your infrastructure with comprehensive privacy controls.

Appvance IQ (AIQ), delivers transformative productivity gains and lower costs for both test creation and execution. It offers both AI-driven (fully automated tests) and 3rd-generation codeless scripting for test creation. These scripts are then executed using data-driven functional and performance, app-pen, and API testing -- both for web and mobile apps. AIQ's self healing technology allows you to cover all code with only 10% of the effort required by traditional testing systems. AIQ detects important bugs automatically and with minimal effort. No programming, scripting, logs, or recording are required. AIQ can be easily integrated with your existing DevOps tools, processes, and tools.

OWASP ZAP, which stands for Zed Attack Proxy, is a freely available, open-source tool for penetration testing, managed by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). This tool is specifically crafted for evaluating web applications, offering both flexibility and extensibility to its users. At its foundation, ZAP operates as a "man-in-the-middle proxy," allowing it to sit between the user's browser and the web application, enabling the interception and inspection of communications exchanged between the two, with the option to modify the content before relaying it to its final destination. It can function independently as a standalone application or run as a daemon process in the background. ZAP caters to various experience levels, making it suitable for developers, novices in security testing, and seasoned security testing professionals alike. Furthermore, it is compatible with major operating systems and Docker, ensuring users are not restricted to a single platform. Users can also enhance their ZAP experience by accessing additional features through a variety of add-ons found in the ZAP Marketplace, which can be conveniently accessed directly within the ZAP client. The continuous updates and community support further contribute to its robustness as a security testing solution.

MaxPatrol is designed to oversee vulnerabilities and ensure compliance within corporate information systems. Central to its functionality are penetration testing, system evaluations, and compliance oversight. These components provide a comprehensive view of security across the entire IT infrastructure while also offering detailed insights at the departmental, host, and application levels, delivering essential information that facilitates the swift identification of vulnerabilities and the prevention of potential attacks. Additionally, MaxPatrol streamlines the process of maintaining an updated inventory of IT assets. It allows users to access details regarding network resources—including network addresses, operating systems, and available applications and services—while also identifying the hardware and software in operation and tracking the status of updates. Remarkably, it monitors changes within the IT infrastructure without missing a beat, detecting new accounts and hosts as they emerge and adapting to updates in hardware and software. Data regarding the security status of the infrastructure is continuously gathered and analyzed, ensuring that organizations have the insights necessary to maintain robust security protocols. This proactive approach not only enhances security awareness but also empowers teams to respond effectively to emerging threats.

SCYTHE is an adversary-emulation platform that serves the cybersecurity consulting and enterprise market. SCYTHE allows Red, Blue, or Purple teams to create and emulate real-world adversarial campaign in just minutes. SCYTHE allows organizations continuously assess their risk exposure and risk posture. SCYTHE goes beyond assessing vulnerabilities. It allows for the evolution from Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures to Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTPs). Organizations should be aware that they may be breached. They should concentrate on assessing and alerting controls. Campaigns are mapped according to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. This is the industry standard and common language among Cyber Threat Intelligence Blue Teams and Red Teams. Adversaries can use multiple communication channels to reach compromised systems within your environment. SCYTHE allows for the testing of preventive and detective controls on various channels.

Kali Linux is a Debian-based, open-source distribution designed specifically for a variety of information security activities, including penetration testing, security research, computer forensics, and reverse engineering. While it's possible to take any Linux distribution and manually install penetration testing tools, this requires considerable setup and configuration efforts. Kali Linux is tailored to minimize this workload, enabling professionals to focus on their tasks right away. You can access a version of Kali from virtually anywhere, whether on mobile devices, Docker, ARM architectures, Amazon Web Services, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, virtual machines, or even bare metal installations. Thanks to metapackages that cater to specific security tasks and a user-friendly ISO customization process that is well-documented, creating an optimized version of Kali to suit your particular needs is straightforward. This makes it a versatile choice for both experienced users and newcomers alike, as comprehensive documentation ensures that everyone can find the guidance they require. Additionally, the active community surrounding Kali Linux continuously contributes to its improvement, further enhancing the resources available to users.

Gophish is an effective, open-source phishing toolkit that simplifies the process of assessing your organization's vulnerability to phishing attacks. With Gophish, users can effortlessly create or import highly realistic phishing templates. The comprehensive web interface features a fully functional HTML editor, allowing for seamless customization of templates directly from your browser. Once a campaign is launched, phishing emails are dispatched automatically in the background, and users have the flexibility to schedule campaigns for any desired time. Results are provided in nearly real-time, and they can be exported for inclusion in reports. Gophish boasts an attractive web interface that enhances user experience. You can easily import pre-existing websites and emails, activate email open tracking, and perform various other tasks with just a single click. Additionally, Gophish continuously updates results, enabling users to monitor a timeline for each recipient that tracks email openings, link clicks, credential submissions, and more. Every aspect of Gophish is crafted to operate smoothly and efficiently. Its intuitive setup and user-friendly design make achieving impactful results feel almost effortless, leaving users with the impression that it operates like magic. This ease of use not only promotes a streamlined phishing test process but also fosters a deeper understanding of potential vulnerabilities within the organization.

Hexway Hive & Apiary allows you to efficiently collaborate with your team and generate detailed reports that can be used for action. It also helps you build better relationships with customers.

We help companies build their trust by creating real security controls and then attesting these controls with a SOC2 report. Oneleet's full-stack platform makes cybersecurity easy and painless. We help businesses to stay secure so they can focus on delivering value to their clients. We'll begin by having a scoping conversation to learn about your security concerns, compliance needs, and infrastructure. We'll then build you a custom security plan that is appropriate for your stage. We'll also take you through a SOC 2 audit with a third-party CPA. Oneleet offers everything you need in one place to become compliant. All tools under one roof make the compliance journey seamless.

BlackArch Linux is a specialized distribution built on Arch Linux, designed specifically for security researchers and penetration testers. Users have the flexibility to install tools either individually or in groups, making it highly customizable. This distribution is fully compatible with standard Arch installations, allowing for easy integration. The BlackArch Full ISO includes a variety of window managers, while the BlackArch Slim ISO comes equipped with the XFCE Desktop Environment. With the full ISO, users receive a complete BlackArch system along with all available tools from the repository at the time of its creation. Conversely, the slim ISO provides a functional setup featuring a curated selection of commonly used tools and system utilities tailored for penetration testing. Additionally, the netinstall ISO represents a streamlined image for those looking to bootstrap their machines with a minimal package set. BlackArch serves as an unofficial user repository for Arch, further extending its capabilities. For ease of installation, users can opt for the Slim medium, which includes a graphical user interface installer, simplifying the setup process. This versatility makes BlackArch Linux an appealing choice for security professionals seeking a robust pentesting environment.