Offensive Security has announced that they released Kali Linux 2022.2, the second release this year. Updates include desktop enhancements, a fun April Fools screensaver, tweaks to the terminal, and new tools!
Kali Linux (formerly known as Backtrack Linux) is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at Penetration Testing and auditing the security of both internal and remote networks. Kali is mainly designed for both cyber security professionals and hobbyists alike.
With the release of 2022.2, the Kali Linux team has implemented a variety of new features including:
- GNOME 42 – Major release update of the popular desktop environment
- KDE Plasma 5.24 – Version bump with a more polished experience
- Multiple desktop enhancements – Disabled motherboard beep on Xfce, alternative panel layout for ARM, better support for VirtualBox shared folders, and lots more
- Tweaks for the terminal – Enhanced Zsh syntax-highlighting, inclusion of Python3-pip and Python3-virtualenv by default
- April fools – Hollywood mode – Awesome screensaver
- Kali Unkaputtbar – BTRFS snapshot support for Kali
- Win-KeX 3.1 – sudo support for GUI apps
- New tools – Various new tools added
- WPS attacks in Kali NetHunter – Added WPS attacks tab to the NetHunter app
Desktop Improvements
Kali Linux 2022.2 includes an upgraded Gnome 42, which includes a cleaner & more sleek feel. The update also includes a screenshot and screen-recording tool.
“The shell theme now includes a more modern look, removing the arrows from the pop-up menus and using more rounded edges. In addition, we’ve upgraded and tweaked the dash-to-dock extension, making it integrate better with the new look and fixing some bugs,” the Kali Team states in their release notes.
Along with the modern look, this update brings both Kali-Dark & Kali-Light themes, with the dark theme shown below:
This update also upgrades KDE Plasma to 5.24 which contains an upgraded design and changes to the interface.
Another noteworthy change is that the Kali Team has added support for their custom icons instead of the older, more pixelated icons that come packaged with the apps.
Hollywood Themed Screen Saver
As a apart of a April Fools Day “Kali 4 Kids” joke, and after seeing Kali Linux used many times in the popular show “Mr. Robot”, the Kali team decided to add a Hollywood-inspired screensaver.
This screensaver can be launched immediately without having to navigate to the screensaver application. Just type this following to command to activate it:
sudo apt -y install hollywood-activate
hollywood-activate
Here’s a video demonstrating the screensaver:
Ten new tools to play around with in Kali Linux 2022.22
This new version also brings a multitude of new tools including wifipumpkin3, Sparrow-wifi and PhpSploit.
Below is the full list of new tools added to Kali Linux 2022.22:
- BruteShark – Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT)
- Evil-WinRM – Ultimate WinRM shell
- Hakrawler – Web crawler designed for easy, quick discovery of endpoints and assets
- Httpx – Fast and multi-purpose HTTP toolkit
- LAPSDumper – Dumps LAPS passwords
- PhpSploit – Stealth post-exploitation framework
- PEDump – Dump Win32 executable files
- SentryPeer – SIP peer-to-peer honeypot for VoIP
- Sparrow-wifi – Graphical Wi-Fi Analyzer for Linux
- wifipumpkin3 – Powerful framework for rogue access points
Kali ARM Updates
ARM users were not left out with this update. There’s many new enhancements mainly focusing around Raspberry PI and Pinebook Pro.
- Bump kernel to 5.10.103
- Bluetooth is fixed, for real this time
- Wi-Fi firmware now uses 7.45.206 by default instead of 7.45.154, with nexmon patches applied
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is now supported by nexmon
- Improvements to the wpa_supplicant.conf handling
- Kernel has NVME support built in, instead of module, so Raspberry Pi Compute Modules that use NVMe for their root device will work out of the box
- The Raspberry Pi userland is now packaged up for ARM64 instead of built manually at image creation
Pinebook Pro:
- Use the Kali kernel and u-boot instead of compiling our own
How to download Kali Linux 2022.2
Downloading & installing Kali Linux can be pretty simple. You can install while using Windows via a Virtual Machine, or as your main operating system (we don’t suggest this).
To start using the new update, navigate to Kali Linux’s download page located here. If you’re installing via a Virtual Machine you can select kali-linux-2022.2-installer-amd64.iso for 64 bit or kali-linux-2022.2-installer-i386.iso for 32 bit.
If you already have Kali Linux and need to upgrade, simply type the commands below to start the update:
echo "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade
[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -f
These are only some of the highlights with this Kali 2022.2 update, to view the complete change log, click here.
