For more than a decade, the Nmap
Project has been cataloguing the network security community's
favorite tools. In 2011 this site became much more dynamic, offering
ratings, reviews, searching, sorting, and a new tool suggestion form.
This site allows open source and commercial tools on any platform,
except those tools that we maintain (such as the Nmap Security Scanner, Ncat network connector, and Nping packet manipulator).
We're very impressed by the collective smarts of the security community and we highly recommend reading the whole list and investigating any tools you are unfamiliar with. Click any tool name for more details on that particular application, including the chance to read (and write) reviews. Many site elements are explained by tool tips if you hover your mouse over them. Enjoy!
Firebug is an add-on for Firefox that provides access to browser internals. It features live editing of HTML and CSS, a DOM viewer, and a JavaScript debugger. Web application security testers appreciate the ability to see what's happening behind the scenes of the browser.
Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.11.1 on Dec. 13, 2012 (6 months, 1 week ago).
Metasploit took the security world by storm when it was released in 2004. It is an advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code. The extensible model through which payloads, encoders, no-op generators, and exploits can be integrated has made it possible to use the Metasploit Framework as an outlet for cutting-edge exploitation research. It ships with hundreds of exploits, as you can see in their list of modules. This makes writing your own exploits easier, and it certainly beats scouring the darkest corners of the Internet for illicit shellcode of dubious quality. One free extra is Metasploitable, an intentionally insecure Linux virtual machine you can use for testing Metasploit and other exploitation tools without hitting live servers.
Metasploit was completely free, but the project was acquired by Rapid7 in 2009 and it soon sprouted commercial variants. The Framework itself is still free and open source, but they now also offer a free-but-limited Community edition, a more advanced Express edition ($3,000 per year per user), and a full-featured Pro edition ($15,000 per user per year). Other paid exploitation tools to consider are Core Impact (more expensive) and Canvas (less).
The Metasploit Framework now includes an official Java-based GUI and also Raphael Mudge's excellent Armitage. The Community, Express, and Pro editions have web-based GUIs.
Read 7 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.5 on Dec. 7, 2012 (6 months, 2 weeks ago).
skipfish is an active web application security reconnaissance tool. It prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.10b on Dec. 4, 2012 (6 months, 2 weeks ago).
Tor is a network of virtual tunnels designed to improve privacy and security on the Internet by routing your requests through a series of intermediate machines. It uses a normal proxy server interface so that ordinary Internet applications like web browsers and chat programs can be configured to use it. In addition to helping preserve users' anonymity, Tor can help evade firewall restrictions. Tor's hidden services allow users publish web sites and other services without revealing their identity or location. For a free cross-platform GUI, users recommend Vidalia. Remember that Tor exit nodes are sometimes run by malicious parties and can sniff your traffic, so avoid authenticating using insecure network protocols (such as non-SSL web sites and mail servers). That is always dangerous, but particularly bad when routing through Tor.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 0.2.3.25 on Dec. 3, 2012 (6 months, 2 weeks ago).
OSSEC HIDS performs log analysis, integrity checking, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response. In addition to its IDS functionality, it is commonly used as a SEM/SIM solution. Because of its powerful log analysis engine, ISPs, universities and data centers are running OSSEC HIDS to monitor and analyze their firewalls, IDSs, web servers and authentication logs.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 2.7 on Nov. 16, 2012 (7 months ago).
The Sleuth Kit (previously known as TSK) is a collection of UNIX-based command line file and volume system forensic analysis tools. The file system tools allow you to examine file systems of a suspect computer in a non-intrusive fashion. Because the tools do not rely on the operating system to process the file systems, deleted and hidden content is shown. A graphical interface to the tools called Autopsy is available.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 4.0.1 on Nov. 13, 2012 (7 months, 1 week ago).
Nessus is one of the most popular and capable vulnerability scanners, particularly for UNIX systems. It was initially free and open source, but they closed the source code in 2005 and removed the free "Registered Feed" version in 2008. It now costs $1,200 per year, which still beats many of its competitors. A free “Home Feed” is also available, though it is limited and only licensed for home network use.
Nessus is constantly updated, with more than 46,000 plugins. Key features include remote and local (authenticated) security checks, a client/server architecture with a web-based interface, and an embedded scripting language for writing your own plugins or understanding the existing ones. The open-source version of Nessus was forked by a group of users who still develop it under the OpenVAS name.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 5.0.2 on Oct. 9, 2012 (8 months, 1 week ago).
BeEF is a browser exploitation framework. This tool will demonstrate the collecting of zombie browsers and browser vulnerabilities in real-time. It provides a command and control interface which facilitates the targeting of individual or groups of zombie browsers. It is designed to make the creation of new exploit modules easy.
Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.4.3.7 on Sept. 1, 2012 (9 months, 3 weeks ago).
WinDbg is a graphical debugger from Microsoft. It is actually just one component of the Debugging Tools for Windows package, which also includes the KD, CDB, and NTSD debuggers. Its claim to fame is debugging memory dumps produced after a crash. It can even debug in kernel mode.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 6.2.9200.16384 on Aug. 15, 2012 (10 months, 1 week ago).
This excellent bootable live CD Linux distribution comes from the merger of Whax and Auditor. It boasts a huge variety of Security and Forensics tools and provides a rich development environment. User modularity is emphasized so the distribution can be easily customized by the user to include personal scripts, additional tools, customized kernels, etc.
Read 17 reviews.
Latest release: version 5 R3 on Aug. 13, 2012 (10 months, 1 week ago).
When you need to brute force crack a remote authentication service, Hydra is often the tool of choice. It can perform rapid dictionary attacks against more then 30 protocols, including telnet, ftp, http, https, smb, several databases, and much more. Like THC Amap this release is from the fine folks at THC. Other online crackers are Medusa and Ncrack. The Nmap Security Scanner also contains many online brute force password cracking modules.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 7.3 on May 23, 2012 (1 year ago).
SAINT is a commercial vulnerability assessment tool. Like Nessus, it used to be free and open source but is now a commercial product. Unlike Nexpose, and QualysGuard, SAINT runs on Linux and Mac OS X. In fact, SAINT is one of the few scanner vendors that don't support (run on) Windows at all.
Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.13 on May 18, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner that was forked from the last free version of Nessus after Nessus went proprietary in 2005. It continues to grow, with more than 23,000 tests as of November 2011. OpenVAS plugins are written in the same NASL language used by Nessus.
Read 21 reviews.
Latest release: version 5.0 on May 10, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
EnCase is a suite of computer forensics software, commonly used by law enforcement. Its wide use has made it a de-facto standard in forensics. It is made to collect data from a computer in a forensically sound manner (employing checksums to help detect tampering).
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.04 on May 10, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
NetScanTools is a collection of over 40 network utilities for Windows, designed with an easy user interface in mind. It includes DNS tools, a ping and port scanner, traceroute, and other utilities. It comes in bundles with more or fewer tools based on the price.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 11.30 on May 8, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
Like Netfilter and ipfilter on other platforms, OpenBSD users love PF, their firewall tool. It handles network address translation, normalizing TCP/IP traffic, providing bandwidth control, and packet prioritization. It also offers some eccentric features, such as passive OS detection. Coming from the same guys who created OpenBSD, you can trust that it has been well audited and coded to avoid the sort of security holes we have seen in otherpacketfilters.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 5.3 on May 1, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
sqlininja exploits web applications that use Microsoft SQL Server as a database backend. Its focus is on getting a running shell on the remote host. sqlninja doesn't find an SQL injection in the first place, but automates the exploitation process once one has been discovered.
Review this tool.
Latest release: version 0.2.6-r1 on April 29, 2012 (1 year, 1 month ago).
TrueCrypt is an excellent open source disk encryption system for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Users can encrypt entire filesystems, which are then on-the-fly encrypted/decrypted as needed without user intervention beyond initially entering their passphrase. A clever hidden volume feature allows you to hide a second layer of particularly sensitive content with plausible deniability about whether it even exists. Then if you are forced to give up your passphrase, you give them the first-level secret. That only allows them access to the innocuous material you have there, without proving that a second level key even exists.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 7.1a on Feb. 7, 2012 (1 year, 4 months ago).
Websecurify is a powerful web application security testing environment designed from the ground up to provide the best combination of automatic and manual vulnerability testing technologies.
Read 3 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.0.2 on Jan. 15, 2012 (1 year, 5 months ago).
Rapid7 Nexpose is a vulnerability scanner which aims to support the entire vulnerability management lifecycle, including discovery, detection, verification, risk classification, impact analysis, reporting and mitigation. It integrates with Rapid7's Metasploit for vulnerability exploitation. It is sold as standalone software, an appliance, virtual machine, or as a managed service or private cloud deployment. User interaction is through a web browser. There is a free "community edition" for scanning up to 32 IPs, as well as Express ($3,000 per user per year), Express Pro ($7,000 per user per year) and Enterprise (starts at $25,000 per user per year) editions.
Read 1 review.
Latest release: version 5.0 on Dec. 5, 2011 (1 year, 6 months ago).
UNIX users often smugly assert that the best free security tools support their platform first, and Windows ports are often an afterthought. They are usually right, but Cain & Abel is a glaring exception. This Windows-only password recovery tool handles an enormous variety of tasks. It can recover passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords using dictionary, brute-force and cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analyzing routing protocols. It is also well documented.
Read 7 reviews.
Latest release: version 4.9.43 on Dec. 3, 2011 (1 year, 6 months ago).
AppScan provides security testing throughout the application development lifecycle, easing unit testing and security assurance early in the development phase. Appscan scans for many common vulnerabilities, such as cross site scripting, HTTP response splitting, parameter tampering, hidden field manipulation, backdoors/debug options, buffer overflows and more. AppScan was merged into IBM's Rational division after IBM purchased its original developer (Watchfire) in 2007.
Read 2 reviews.
Latest release: version 8.5 on Nov. 15, 2011 (1 year, 7 months ago).
Canvas is a commercial vulnerability exploitation tool from Dave Aitel's ImmunitySec. It includes more than 370 exploits and is less expensive than Core Impact or the commercial versions of Metasploit. It comes with full source code, and occasionally even includes zero-day exploits.
Review this tool.
Latest release: version 6.73 on Oct. 26, 2011 (1 year, 7 months ago).
W3af is an extremely popular, powerful, and flexible framework for finding and exploiting web application vulnerabilities. It is easy to use and extend and features dozens of web assessment and exploitation plugins. In some ways it is like a web-focused Metasploit.
Read 10 reviews.
Latest release: version 1.1 on Oct. 11, 2011 (1 year, 8 months ago).
The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. The CD contains the best of the open source and free tools that focus on testing and attacking websites. Samurai includes many other tools featured in this list, such as WebScarab, ratproxy, w3af, Burp Suite, and BeEF.
Read 4 reviews.
Latest release: version 0.9.9 on Aug. 13, 2011 (1 year, 10 months ago).
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