Popular open source security tools !

Protecting your system has way too many aspects. Different users use different platforms, apps, tools etc. to suite their needs and liking. Moreover, attackers can come calling from various sources and you have to ensure that vulnerabilities are always plugged. It is only obvious you need apps that can take care of these tasks for you. And when these are open source, well that's even better!





1.Wireshark

Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyser. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education. Wireshark is cross-platform, using the GTK+ widget toolkit in current releases, and Qt in the development version, to implement its user interface, and using pcap to capture packets; it runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, BSD, Solaris, and some other Unix-like operating systems, and on Microsoft Windows.

2.tcpdump/libpcap

tcpdump is a powerful command-line packet analyser while libpcap is a portable C/C++ library for network traffic capture. Operating System: Linux. 

3.WinDump

WinDump is the Windows version of tcpdump, the command line network analyser for UNIX. WinDump is fully compatible with tcpdump and can be used to watch, diagnose and save to disk network traffic according to various complex rules. It can run under Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.

4.BackTrack Linux

BackTrack is a Linux-based penetration testing arsenal that aids security professionals in the ability to perform assessments in a purely native environment dedicated to hacking. Regardless if you’re making BackTrack you Install BackTrack, boot it from a Live DVD or thumbdrive, the penetration distribution has been customised down to every package, kernel configuration, script and patch solely for the purpose of the penetration tester.

5.IprediaOS

IprediaOS is a fast, powerful and stable operating system based on Linux that provides an anonymous environment. All network traffic is automatically and transparently encrypted and anonymised.

6.Liberté Linux

Liberté Linux is a secure, reliable, lightweight and easy to use Gentoo-based LiveUSB/SD/CD Linux distribution with the primary purpose of enabling anyone to communicate safely and covertly in hostile environments. 

7.Matriux

It is a fully featured security distribution based on Debian consisting of a powerful bunch of more than 300 open source and free tools that can be used for various purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, ethical hacking, system and network administration, cyber forensics investigations, security testing, vulnerability analysis, and much more. 

8.NetSecl

NetSecL is a hardened,live and installable OS based on OpenSuse suitable for Desktop/Server and Penetration testing. 

9.PwnPi

PWNPi is a penatration testing distro for the the Raspberry Pi. It currently has 200 penetration and network security auditing tools.

10.SELinux

SELinux is a security enhancement to Linux which allows users and administrators more control over access control. Access can be constrained on such variables as which users and applications can access which resources. These resources may take the form of files.

11.Tails

Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity.

12.Ophcrack

Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms. 

13.Cryptohaze

Cryptohaze is the home of high performance, open source, network-enabled, US-based cross-platform GPU and OpenCL accelerated password auditing tools for security professionals. 

14.PDFCrack

PDFCrack is a GNU/Linux tool for recovering passwords and content from PDF-files. It is small, command line driven without external dependencies. The application is Open Source (GPL).

15.KeePass Password Safe

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. 

16.Ettercap

Ettercap is a comprehensive suite for man in the middle attacks. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols and includes many features for network and host analysis.

17.Katana

Katana is a portable multi-boot security suite which brings together many of today's best security distributions and portable applications to run off a single Flash Drive. It includes distributions which focus on Pen-Testing, Auditing, Forensics, System Recovery, Network Analysis, and Malware Removal. 

18.Nikto

Nikto is an Open Source (GPL) web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 6700 potentially dangerous files/programs, checks for outdated versions of over 1250 servers, and version specific problems on over 270 servers. It also checks for server configuration items such as the presence of multiple index files, HTTP server options, and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software. Scan items and plugins are frequently updated and can be automatically updated. 

19.OpenVAS

OpenVAS is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. 

20.OWASP Zed Attack Proxy 

The Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) is an easy to use integrated penetration testing tool for finding vulnerabilities in web applications.