SecTools.Org: Top 125 Network Security Tools

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!

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(3) ★★★★★ OpenBSD PF (#79, 22)

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 other  packet  filters. Read 4 reviews.

Latest release: version 5.3 on May 1, 2012 (11 years, 11 months ago).

(1) ★★★★★ Nipper (#81, new!)

Nipper (short for Network Infrastructure Parser, previously known as CiscoParse) audits the security of network devices such as switches, routers, and firewalls. It works by parsing and analyzing device configuration file which the Nipper user must supply. This was an open source tool until its developer (Titania) released a commercial version and tried to hide their old GPL releases (including the GPLv2 version 0.10 source tarball). Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 1.3.

(1) ★★★★★ Wikto (#83, 1)

Wikto is a tool that checks for flaws in webservers. It provides much the same functionality as Nikto but adds various interesting pieces of functionality, such as a Back-End miner and close Google integration. Wikto is written for the MS .NET environment and registration is required to download the binary and/or source code. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 2.1.0.0 on Dec. 14, 2008 (15 years, 4 months ago).

(2) ★★★★★ NoScript (#85, new!)

NoScript is an add-on for Firefox that blocks JavaScript, Java, Flash, and other plugin content (allowing you to selectively re-enable them for certain sites). It also offers cross-site scripting protection. This is mainly designed to keep web users safe, but security testers can also use the add-on to see what scripts a site is using. One caution is that the NoScript author Giorgio Maone has been caught inserting hidden code into NoScript which disabled users' ad-blocking software so that ads would still show up on the NoScript web site. He did post a lengthy apology. Read 3 reviews.

Latest release: version 2.6.9.36 on Aug. 20, 2015 (8 years, 8 months ago).

(3) ★★★★★ Samurai Web Testing Framework (#87, new!)

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 5 reviews.

Latest release: version 3.3.2 on Jan. 22, 2016 (8 years, 3 months ago).

(4) ★★★★★ Firebug (#89, new!)

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 5 reviews.

Latest release: version 2.0.12 on Aug. 11, 2015 (8 years, 8 months ago).

(1) ★★★★★ KisMAC (#97, 42)

This popular wireless stumbler for Mac OS X offers many of the features of its namesake Kismet, though the codebase is entirely different. Unlike console-based Kismet, KisMAC offers a pretty GUI and was around before Kismet was ported to OS X. It also offers mapping, Pcap-format import and logging, and even some decryption and deauthentication attacks. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 0.3.3 on Feb. 7, 2011 (13 years, 2 months ago).

(1) ★★★★★ dradis (#107, new!)

dradis is an open source framework to enable effective sharing of information among participants in a penetration test. It is a self-contained web application that provides a centralised repository of information to keep track of what has been done so far, and what is still ahead. It has plugins to read and collect the output of a variety of network scanning tools, like Nmap, Burp Suite, and Nikto. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 2.6.1 on Feb. 11, 2011 (13 years, 2 months ago).

(1) ★★★★★ DirBuster (#112, new!)

DirBuster searches for hidden pages and directories on a web server. Sometimes developers will leave a page accessible, but unlinked; DirBuster is meant to find these potential vulnerabilities. This is a Java application developed by OWASP. Read 2 reviews.

Latest release: version 2.0-RC1 on March 3, 2009 (15 years, 1 month ago).

(1) ★★★★★ WebGoat (#122, new!)

WebGoat is a deliberately insecure J2EE web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons. In each lesson, users must demonstrate their understanding of a security issue by exploiting a real vulnerability in the WebGoat application. For example, in one of the lessons the user must use SQL injection to steal fake credit card numbers. The application is a realistic teaching environment, providing users with hints and code to further explain the lesson. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 5.3 RC1 on Nov. 1, 2009 (14 years, 5 months ago).

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