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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no rating Knoppix (#103, 43)

Knoppix consists of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. Knoppix can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or as many Nmap survey takers attest, a portable security tool. For a security-specific Linux distribution see BackTrack. Review this tool.

Latest release: version 7.2.0 on June 24, 2013 (10 years, 10 months ago).

(4) ★★★★★ ophcrack (#35, new!)

Ophcrack is a free rainbow-table based cracker for Windows passwords (though the tool itself runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac). Features include LM and NTLM hash cracking, a GUI, the ability to load hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition, and a Live CD version. Some tables are provided as a free download but larger ones have to be bought from Objectif Sécurité. Read 8 reviews.

Latest release: version 3.6.0 on June 4, 2013 (10 years, 10 months ago).

(3) ★★★★★ John the Ripper (#10, unchanged)

John the Ripper is a fast password cracker for UNIX/Linux and Mac OS X.. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords, though it supports hashes for many other platforms as well. There is an official free version, a community-enhanced version (with many contributed patches but not as much quality assurance), and an inexpensive pro version. You will probably want to start with some wordlists, which you can find here, here, or here. Read 7 reviews.

Latest release: version 1.8.0 on May 30, 2013 (10 years, 10 months ago).

(1) ★★★★★ HijackThis (#123, new!)

HijackThis inspects a computer’s browser and operating system settings to generate a log file of its current state. It can selectively remove unwanted settings and files. Its main focus is on web browser hijacking. It is a freeware utility originally written by Merijn Bellekom but now distributed by Trend Micro. Read 2 reviews.

Latest release: version 2.0.5 on May 18, 2013 (10 years, 11 months ago).

no rating EtherApe (#64, 21)

Featuring link layer, IP, and TCP modes, EtherApe displays network activity graphically with a color coded protocols display. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. It supports Ethernet, WLAN, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network. Review this tool.

Latest release: version 0.9.13 on May 5, 2013 (10 years, 11 months ago).

(2) ★★★★★ Kismet (#11, 4)

Kismet is a console (ncurses) based 802.11 layer-2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. It identifies networks by passively sniffing (as opposed to more active tools such as NetStumbler), and can even decloak hidden (non-beaconing) networks if they are in use. It can automatically detect network IP blocks by sniffing TCP, UDP, ARP, and DHCP packets, log traffic in Wireshark/tcpdump compatible format, and even plot detected networks and estimated ranges on downloaded maps. As you might expect, this tool is commonly used for wardriving. Oh, and also warwalking, warflying, and warskating, etc. Read 2 reviews.

Latest release: version Kismet-2013-03-R1b on April 8, 2013 (11 years ago).

(2) ★★★★★ Argus (#78, 5)

Argus is a fixed-model Real Time Flow Monitor designed to track and report on the status and performance of all network transactions seen in a data network traffic stream. Argus provides a common data format for reporting flow metrics such as connectivity, capacity, demand, loss, delay, and jitter on a per transaction basis. The record format that Argus uses is flexible and extensible, supporting generic flow identifiers and metrics, as well as application/protocol specific information. There is also another open source network monitoring program named Argus. Read 3 reviews.

Latest release: version 3.7 on Feb. 1, 2013 (11 years, 2 months ago).

(2) ★★★★½ skipfish (#39, new!)

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 (11 years, 4 months ago).

(2) ★★★½ The Sleuth Kit (#101, new!)

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 2 reviews.

Latest release: version 4.0.1 on Nov. 13, 2012 (11 years, 5 months ago).

(17) ★★★★ BackTrack (#7, 25)

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. BackTrack is succeeded by Kali Linux. Read 22 reviews.

Latest release: version 5 R3 on Aug. 13, 2012 (11 years, 8 months ago).

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