Penetration testing is an effective testing process that helps to uncover the critical security issues of your system to check for exploitable vulnerabilities to their IT Infrastructure, or web applications.
Below is the infographic of important penetration testing tools in 2021:
1.Wireshark– It is an open-source tool used to easily capture and interpret network packets. It is available for many OS like Windows, Linux. A penetration tester can easily capture and interpret network packets.
2. Metasploit– Metasploit Framework is a very powerful tool that can be used by cybercriminals as well as ethical hackers to investigate systematic vulnerabilities on networks and servers. Because it is an open-source framework, it can be easily customized and used with most operating systems.
3. SQL Map– SQLmap is an open-source tool used in penetration testing to detect and exploit SQL injection flaws. It supports multiple platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. SQLmap automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injections. SQL injection attacks can control databases that use SQL.
4. Nessus– Nessus is a remote security scanning tool that scans a computer and offers an alert if it finds vulnerability those malicious hackers could practice to gain access to every computer you connect to the network. Nessus Bridge for Metasploit is a highly user community project that has enabled Nessus to integrate with a variety of popular security tools. You can also automate the above method using a script that will start Nessus, conduct a scan, and exploit remotely exploitable vulnerabilities.
5. W3AF– W3AF is a web application attack and audit framework that aims to identify and exploit vulnerabilities across web applications. The project has over 130 plug-in that detect and exploit SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), remote file inclusion, and many more. It is used to eliminate threats like DNS, cache poisoning, cookie handling, proxy support, etc.
6. NMAP– NMAP is one of the primary tools used by network administrators nowadays to map organizations’ networks to find gaps or issues. The program can be used to find live hosts on the network, port scanning, ping sweep, OS exposure, and version detection. This equipment is also used for inspection purposes.
7. Burp Suite– Burp Suite Professional is one of the most well-known penetration testing and vulnerability finder tools and is commonly used to monitor web application security. It is a generally recognized, proxy-based tool that serves to evaluate the security of web-based applications and to conduct practical experiments. With over 40,000 users, Burp Suite is the world’s most widely used web vulnerability scanner. It has a robust and modular framework and is packed with optional extensions that can enhance web application testing efficiency.
8. John the Ripper Password Cracker– It is an open-source tool used to uncover vulnerabilities in passwords. This tool automatically recognizes different password hashes and detects problems with passwords in the database.
9. Acunetix– This tool is used by security experts and ethical hackers to perform penetration testing. It is used not only to find but also to assess vulnerabilities. The combination of black-box and white-box testing helps to improve the detection rate of scans, and helps reduce false-positive rates, along with automated confirmation of much high-severe vulnerability. Advanced features include manual penetration testing tools, automated Web Application Firewall (WAF) configuration, and a REST API for integrating Acunetix into other custom workflows and methods.