A brief history of Kali Linux

Kali Linux (Kali) is a Linux distribution system that was developed with a focus on penetration testing. Previously, Kali Linux was distributed as BackTrack, which itself is a merger between three different live Linux penetration testing distributions: IWHAX, WHOPPIX, and Auditor.

BackTrack is one of the most famous Linux distribution systems, as can be proven by the number of downloads, which reached more than four million as of BackTrack Linux 4.0 pre final.

Kali Linux Version 1.0 was released on March 12, 2013. Five days later, Version 1.0.1 was released, which fixed the USB keyboard issue. In those five days, Kali had been downloaded more than 90,000 times.

An updated version, Kali Linux 2.0, was released on August 11, 2015. This distribution aimed to provide a better end-user experience, while still maintaining the full functionality of the previous versions. One of the major improvements available in Kali Linux 2.0 was moving toward a rolling distribution. This meant that the Kali Linux developers were pulling updated base Linux packages directly as they were updated, giving the user a stable platform that is updated regularly.

The following are the major features of Kali Linux (http://docs.kali.org/introduction/what-is-kali-linux):

• It is based on the Debian Linux distribution
• It has more than 600 penetration testing applications
• It has vast wireless card support (this will come in handy later on in this book)
• It has a custom kernel patched for packet injection
• All Kali software packages are GPG signed by each developer
• Users can customize Kali Linux to suit their needs
• It supports ARM-based systems