Wireless Hacking Tools
Wireless Hacking Tools are those hacking tools which are used to hack into a wireless network which is usually more susceptible to security threats. One must also ensure that the network is completely secured against hacking or other malware. The list of wireless hacking tools which would be discussed now can be used to do a Penetration Testing for a Wireless Network. This is an intentional attack on a network to detect security vulnerabilities by accessing its data and functionality.
It is a powerful tool for packet injection in an 802.11 wireless network and is very useful as it has the capability to send in forged de-authentication packets. This feature is usually used by a hacker to bring down a network.
Kismet is a wireless detector system which detects possible intrusion to an 802.11 layer2 wireless network, it is also a sniffer. There is certain plug-in supported by Kismet which enables sniffing media like DECT. It also has the capacity to infer whether a nonbeaconing network is present or not via the data traffic in the network and a network is identified by this tool by collecting data packets passively, detecting hidden and standard named networks.
It is a software suite specially designed for a wireless network and which operates under both the Windows and the Linux Operating System. Aircrack-ng consists of a packet sniffer, WPA cracker, and analysis tool and a detector for the wireless Local Area Networks (802.11). The best part of this software suit is one need not install it to use it. It is a collection of files which can be easily used with a command prompt.
There have been many wireless hacking tools exposed in recent past. When a hacker hacks a wireless network, it is supposed to defeat the Wireless network’s security devices. The Wi-Fi networks i.e. the Wireless LANs are more exposed to the security threats from a hacker while compared to that of a wired network. While hackers are always more than ready to hack especially if there are weaknesses in a computer network, hacking is often a tedious and complicated procedure.
NetStumbler is a hacking tool which is used in the Windows Operating system and comes with add-ons which are used to hack a wireless network. It has the capability to convert a WIFI enabled laptop on Windows OS into a network detector in an 802.11 WLAN.
InSSIDer is a network scanner which is used in a Wi-Fi network for the Windows Operating System as well as the Apple OS X. It has been developed by MetaGeek, LLC. It is used to collect information from both software and a wireless card and is useful in selecting the availability of the best wireless channel. It also shows those Wi-Fi network channels which overlap with each other.
It is a discovery tool for a wireless network for the Mac OS X operating system. It has many features which are similar to another wireless detector tool called Kismet. This tool is meant for expert network security personnel and is not very user-friendly for the beginners
KARMA
KARMA is an attack tool which takes the advantage of the probing techniques that is used by used by a client of a WLAN. The station searches for a Wireless LAN in the list of preferred network and it is then that it makes the SSID open for an attacker who is listening. The disclosed SSID is used by KARMA for impersonation of a valid WLAN and attracts the station to the listening attacker.
Firesheep
In order to log into a website, a user has submitted details like his or her username and password. The server validates these data and sends back a “cookie”. The websites usually encrypt the password, however, does not encrypt other details which leave the cookie exposed to hacking threats which are also known as HTTP session hijacking. Firesheep has a packet sniffer which can intercept the cookies which are encrypted from Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook and comes with the Firefox web browser. Firesheep is available for both the Windows and Mac OS X operating system. It would also run on the Linux platform in the new future.
WepLab
The WebLab is a tool which teaches about the weaknesses of a WEP, how a WEP works and how it is used to break a wireless network which is WEP protected. It has the features of a WEP Security Analyzer.
Hacking Operating Systems
There are numerous professionals who aspire to have a career as ethical hackers. Hacking is not an easy task as it requires great insight about technology and programming. There are specific operating systems as well that are specially designed for the hackers to use. These operating systems have preloaded tools and technologies that hackers can utilize to hack. This article offers a detailed overview of various operating systems that are built keeping hacking in mind. All these operating systems are unique from each other and have proved to be a great resource for the hackers around the world.
This is a creation of the makers of BackTrack. This is regarded as the most versatile and advanced penetration testing distribution ever created. The documentation of the software is built in an easy format to make it the most user-friendly. It is one of the must-have tools for ethical hackers that is making a buzz in the market.
This operating system is built keeping the savviest security personnel in mind as the audience. This is also a useful tool even for the early newcomers in the information security field. It offers a quick and easy way to find and also update the largest database available for the security tools collection till date.
It is security focused live CD that is created based on Gentoo. It has a large number of customized tools and kernels including a hardened kernel consisting of aufs patches. It can backport Wi-Fi stack from the latest kernel release that is stable as well. There are development tools in Pentoo that have Cuda/OPENCL cracking.
It is free and open source penetration testing distribution available over the internet. It is based on Ubuntu 10.10, which is designed specifically for information security, training students and professionals. It is fast and stable, yet a powerful tool that works perfectly for you. This software is a recommendation from most of the users.
If you are looking for a distro to be used in penetration testing and cyber forensic investigation, then Matriux Krypton is the name that you can trust. This is a Debian based GNU/Linux security distribution. It has more than 340 powerful tools for penetration testing and forensics; additionally, it contains custom kernel 3.9.4.
Security Enhanced Linux or SELinux is an upstream repository that is used for various userland tools and libraries. There are various capabilities like policy compilation, policy management and policy development which are incorporated in this utility tool along with SELinux services and utilities. The user can get the software as a tested release or from the development repository.
This is regarded as the specialist tool that is specifically designed for security auditing and penetration testing. It is a reliable, stable and powerful tool to be used for this purpose and is based on the current Ubuntu Linux distribution. It is a free and open source system that you can download from the website.
It’s a great pen testing distro comprising of some innovative pen testing tools. The software uses Fluxbox and is built using Debian Squeeze. One of its popular features is its ability to hack old Android based systems.
The website of Knoppix offers a free open source live Linux CD. The CD and DVD that is available contain the latest and recent updated Linux software along with desktop environments. This is one of the best tools for the beginners and includes programs like OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Konqueror, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
It is a Linux distribution that is based on Ubuntu. If you want to perform security assessment and penetration tests, this software is the one that you should have in your repository. It proactively protects the IT infrastructure. It has the capability to simplify the complexity of your IT infrastructure with ease as well.
It is a live Linux environment that is designed in such a way that it functions as a web pen testing environment. The software CD contains tools and programs that are open source and free. The tool selection is based on the ones that the company themselves use for security of their IT infrastructure.
CAINE (Computer Aided Investigative Environment)
It is an Italian GNU/Linux live distribution list that was created as a project of Digital Forensic. It offers a complete forensic environment. This environment is organized in such a way that it integrates the existing software tools and software module and finally, throws the result in the form of friendly graphical interface.
There are various versions of Helix released by e-fense that are useful for both home and business use. The Helix3 Enterprise is a cyber-security solution offered by this organization that provides an incident response. It throws live response and acquires volatile data. Helix3 Pro is the newest version in the block of Helix family products.
DEFT is a distribution that is created for computer forensics. It can run in a live stream on the system without corrupting the device. The system is based on GNU/Linux and the user can run this live using CD/DVD or USB pen drive. DEFT is now paired with DART, which is a forensic system.
Bugtraq
It is one of the most stable and comprehensive distributions. It offers stable and optimal functionalities with the stable manager in real-time. It is based upon 3.2 and 3.4 kernel Generic that is available in both 32 and 64 Bits. Bugtraq has a wide range of tools in various branches of the kernel. The features of the distribution vary as per your desktop environment
Vulnerability Scanners
The scanners which assess the vulnerability of a network or a computer to security attacks are known as Vulnerability Scanners. The tools might function differently, however, all of them aim to provide an analysis on how vulnerable the system or a network is. Here is a list of the best ones:
It is a parser for network infrastructure and its full form is Network Infrastructure Parser. This open source scanner helps with features like auditing, configuring and managing devices for network infrastructure as well as managing the computer networks.
This scanner is tipped by many to be the most advanced vulnerability scanner in the world and is a powerful and comprehensive tool for scanning as well as providing solutions for vulnerability management. It is free software and is maintained daily.
Retina, with more than 10,000 deployments, is one of the most sophisticated vulnerability scanners in the market. It aids in efficient identifications of IT vulnerability and is also available as a standalone application as well. It essentially identifies weaknesses in the configuration and missing patches.
Nessus is the world’s most popular vulnerable scanner topping the list in the years 2000, 2003 and in the year 2006 survey on security tools. It’s free to use vulnerability scanner for personal use in the nonenterprise environment.
It is free computer security software which scans software on a computer system. It tracks those third party/non-Microsoft programs which require security updates to protect your computer against hackers and cyber-criminals.
Vulnerability management is one of the best security practices to protect the system or a network from security threats. Nexpose is a vulnerability management scanner which does different kind of vulnerability checks where there’s a risk in IT security.
It is a vulnerability management scanner which provides solutions for vulnerability management by applications through the web. Designed by Qualys Inc., it’s available on demand. It helps the users by analyzing their vulnerability status.
Web Vulnerability Scanners
While vulnerability scanners are meant for your system, the web vulnerability scanners assess the vulnerability of web applications. It identifies the security vulnerabilities that your app might have by conducting various tests.
It is a testing tool for web security applications and has been written in Java and thus is operating system independent. It acts as a proxy and lets users change web requests by web browsers and web server replies. Webscarab often records the traffic to conduct a further review.
It is a scanner for web servers and is available as an open source. It conducts detailed testing for several items against the web servers which include testing of more than 6700 files or programs which can be dangerous. It also tests for version specific problems of the web servers.
Burp Suite is a tool for conducting the security test of web-based applications. It has a collection of tools which work together and conduct the entire process of testing with an objective to find as well as exploit the vulnerabilities in the security.
Website security is a crucial factor for both personal as well as organization websites. The prime goal should be to detect the vulnerability of your website before an intruder detects it. Websecurify is a testing tool for website security and can be used to detect the vulnerability of your webs
This tool exposes more than 200 potential vulnerabilities and thus minimizes security threats to your websites. It’s written in the programming language Python. W3af has both console user interface as well as graphical user interface.
Traffic Monitoring for Network Related Hacking
These tools allow users to monitor the websites one’s children or employees are viewing. Here’s a list of some of these tools
Ngrep or network grep is a pcap-aware tool that allows you to extend hexadecimal or regular expressions in order to match it against the data loads of the packet. It can recognize IPv4/6, UDP, TCP, Ethernet, SLIP, PPP, FDDI and many others.
It is a versatile passive tool that is used for OS fingerprinting. This passive tool works well in both Linux and Windows operating systems. It has the capability to detect the hooking up of the remote system whether it is Ethernet, DSL or OC3.
Nagios is the name for the industry standard in monitoring IT infrastructure. The Nagios tools help you monitor your entire IT infrastructure and have the capability to detect problems well ahead they occur. It can also detect security breaches and share data availability with stakeholders.
If you want to convert your data into powerful insights Splunk tools are the best options for you. The Splunk tools are the leading platforms for operational intelligence. It can collect any type of data from any machine in real time.
Intrusion Detection System And The IDS Tools
An Intrusion Detection System is a software application or a device which is equipped to do network or system monitoring activities for any malicious threats and sends reports to the management station. Intrusion detection tools can help in identifying potential threats which can be dangerous for the system or the network.
NetCop is an advanced intrusion detection system which is available practically everywhere. NetCop makes use of a specific method to classify the spyware. This is because there are several software programs which intrude your privacy and which have a different kind of capabilities. NetCop gives a distinct threat level to each program, thus classifying the threats.
It is an open source Network Intrusion System as well as a Network Intrusion Prevention System which is free for all to use. It was created in 1988 by Martin Roesch. It has the capability to perform packet logging and analysis of real-time traffic on networks which are using the internet protocol.
Hacking Vulnerability Exploitation Tools
A tool which identifies whether a remote host is vulnerable to a security attack and tries to protect the host by providing a shell or other function remotely is called a Vulnerability Exploitation tool. Here is a list of some o the popular ones:
Metasploit was released in the year 2004 and it was an instant hit in the world of computer security. Metasploit provides data on the vulnerabilities in the security system and it helps in conducting penetration testing too.
The main objective of this tool is to access a vulnerable DB server; it’s used for pen testing so that the procedure of controlling a DB server can be automated when the vulnerability of an SQL injection has been tracked.
It is a penetration testing tool which is available as an open source. Its goal is to automate the detection and exploitation process of the injection flaws in SQL and to take over the database servers.
This toolkit also known as SET was designed by TrustedSec. The tool comes as an open source code and is Python driven. It is used for conducting Penetration Testing around Social Engineer.
BeEF is the short term for The Browser Exploitation Framework. It is a tool for penetration testing which concentrates on a web browser and thus accesses the actual security position of the environment it’s targeting.
It is a web-based security scanner which has an exploitation engine to confirm the security vulnerabilities and makes the user concentrate on elimination of security threats with its False-Positive free feature.
Dradis stands for Direction, Range, and Distance. It is an open source vulnerability scanner or application which provides the facility of information sharing effectively, especially during assessing the security of the system in a central repository.
Password Cracker Software
A password cracker software, which is often referred to as a password recovery tool, can be used to crack or recover the password either by removing the original password, after bypassing the data encryption or by an outright discovery of the password. In the process of password cracking, a very common methodology used to crack the user password is to repeatedly make guesses for the probable password and perhaps finally hitting on the correct one. It cannot be denied that whenever we are referring to cyber security, passwords are the most vulnerable security links. On the other hand, if the password is too completed, the user might forget it. Password Cracker software are often used by the hackers to crack the password and access a system to manipulate it. Do not unethically use this software for hacking passwords.
In the next section you would be getting familiar with some of the popular Password Cracker tools which are used by hackers for password cracking.
Rainbow Crack as the name suggests, is a cracker for hashes with the Rainbow Tables. It runs on multiple operating systems such as Linux, Windows Vista, Windows XP (Windows Operating Systems). It supports both Graphical User Interface as well as Command line Interface. It’s software which is used for password cracking by generating rainbow tables, fuzzing all the parameters.
Fgdump is a powerful cracking tool. In fact, it’s much more powerful than pwdump6 as the latter has the tendency to hang whenever there is a presence of an antivirus. Fgdump has the capability to handle this problem of hanging by shutting down first. It later restarts the Antivirus software. It supports multi-threading which is very relevant in the multitasking and multi-user environment.
Every password security study has revealed that the biggest security weaknesses are the passwords. THC Hydra is a tool for cracking logins and it is flexible as it supports various protocols. It is very fast and at the same time, new modules can be easily added. Hydra can run on operating systems like Solaris 11, OSX, Windows, and Linux.
The objective of this security tool is to locate the valid user identities in a Virtual Public Network along with the secret key combinations. Once this is accomplished, this information can be used easily by a hacker to have access to a VPN in an unauthorized manner
Brutus is one of the most flexible and free password crackers which operates remotely. It is popular also because of its high speed and operates under operating systems such as Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows 9x. Currently, it does not operate under the UNIX operating system. Brutus was initially designed to check network devices like routers for common as well as default passwords.
L0phtCrack which is now known as L0phtCrack6 is a tool which tests the strength of a password given, as well as to recover lost passwords on Microsoft Windows platform. Thus it is a tool for both password recovery as well as auditing the password. It uses techniques such as Rainbow tables, brute-force, and dictionary to recover passwords.
John the Ripper is a free software for password cracking which was originally designed for the Unix Operating System. At present, it can run on 15 Operating systems which include 11 different versions of UNIX, Win32, DOS, and BeOS. It has the capability to combine several password crackers into a single package which has made it one of the most popular cracking tools for hackers.
Hashcrack is password cracker for GPU(s) and CPU(s) using OpenCL. It can run on NVDIA and AMD devices. It is a very powerful password cracking tool that is also well documented.
It is a free password cracker software which is based on the effective implementation of the rainbow tables. It runs on a number of Operating Systems like Mac OS X, Unix/Linux and Windows Operating System. It is equipped with real-time graphs for analyzing the passwords and is an open source software. Ophcrack has the capability to crack both NTLM hashes as well as LM hashes.
Medusa is one of the best online brute-force, speedy, parallel password crackers which is available on the Internet. It has been designed by the members of the website foofus.net. It is also widely used in Penetration testing to ensure that the vulnerability of the system can be exposed and appropriate security measures can be taken against hacking.
It is a network software suite used in 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks. It consists of tools such as a packet sniffer, detector, and a WEP. This tool runs on both Windows and Linux Operating systems. It can work with any type of wireless network interface controller, provided the driver is supporting the raw monitoring mode.
Wfuzz is a flexible tool for brute forcing Internet-based applications. It supports many features like Multithreading, Header brute forcing, Recursion when discovering directories, Cookies, Proxy Support, hiding results and encoding the URLs to name a few. Wfuzz is a useful tool for finding unlinked resources like scripts, directories, and servlets as well.
Cain and Abel, often referred to as Cain, is a tool for recovering the password in the Windows platform. It has the capability to recover various kinds of passwords using techniques such as cracking the password hashes by using brute-forcing, dictionary attacks, cryptanalysis attacks and packet sniffing in the network.
Packet Crafting To Exploit Firewall Weaknesses
Through Packet crafting technique, an attacker capitalizes your firewall’s vulnerabilities. Here are some packet crafting tools
It is a command-line crafting and injecting utility tool used for network packets. This program works for both Unix and Windows operating systems. This is a well-suited tool for testing Network, Intrusion Detection System, IP Stacks, Firewalls and many others
Netcat is a simple Unix utility program. This program has the capability to read and write data across network connections and it does so by using UDP or TPC protocol. It was created as a reliable back-end tool.
It is a powerful and interactive packet manipulation program. Scapy has the capability to decode or forge the packets of a large number of protocols at a time. One of the best features is that it can confuse the process of decoding and interpreting.
This is again a command-line based utility tool. It has the capability to establish a two bidirectional byte streams through which it transfers data. In this tool streams can be constructed from a large set of different data sinks.
Earlier Hping was used as a security tool. Now it is used as a command-line oriented TCP/IP packet analyzer or assembler. You can use this for Firewall testing, advanced port scanning, network testing by using fragmentation, TOS, and different other protocols.
Yersinia
Not all the network protocols are powerful. In order to take advantage of the weakness of certain network protocols, Yersinia is created. It is a full-proof framework that analyzes and tests the deployed networks and systems.
Best Network Scanning & Hacking Tools
It is a fast port and IP address scanner. It is a lightweight and cross-platform application that has the capacity to scan the IP addresses in any range and also in their ports. It simply pings each IP address.
Nmap or Network Mapper is a free open source utility tool for network discovery and security auditing solution for you. It is a flexible, powerful, portable and easy-to-use tool that is supported by most of the operating systems like Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS and others.
It is a multi-functional application that is designed for scanning TPC port. This is also a pinger and address resolver. It also has useful features like ping, traceroute, WhoIs and HTTP request. There is no need of installation as it is a portable application.
Packet Sniffers To Analyze Traffic
These tools help capture and analyze incoming traffic on your website. Some of the popular ones are listed below
It is a comprehensive suite in the middle of the attack. It has the feature of sniffing the live connections and content filtering along with many other interesting tricks. It offers three interfaces, traditional command line, GUI, and Ncurses.
Tcpdump is a command-line packet analyzer. After completing the designated task of packet capturing Tcpdump will throw the report that will contain numbers of captured packet and packets received by the filter. The user can use flags like –v, -r and –w to run this packet analyzer tool.
If you want to put a security system, Wireshark is the must-have security tool. It monitors every single byte of the data that is transferred via the network system. If you are a network administrator or penetration tester this tool is a must have.
EtherApe is graphical network monitor for UNIX model PCs after etherman. This interactive tool graphically displays network activity. It features link layer and TCP/IP modes. It supports Token Ring, FDDI, Ethernet, PPP, SLIP, ISDN and other WLAN devices.
Web Proxies: Proxies fundamentally assist in adding encapsulation to distributed systems. The client can request an item on your server by contacting a proxy server.
Dsniff is the collection of various tools that are used for penetration testing and network auditing. The tools like dsniff, msgsnarf, mailsnarf, webspy and urlsnarf passively monitor a network of interesting data like files, emails, passwords and many others.
A passive and semi-automated application which is essentially a security audit tool. It can accurately detect and annotate problems in web 2.0 platforms.
This tool is the one that demonstrates HTTPS stripping attack. It has the capability to hijack HTTP traffic on the network in a transparent manner. It watches the HTTPS link and then redirect and maps those links into homograph-similar or look-alike HTTP links.
It is a Java-based HTTP/HTTPS proxy that helps in assessing the vulnerability of web applications. It supports both viewing and editing HTTP messages on-the-fly. It is supported by Unix and Windows systems. There are some other features as well like client certificate, spiders, proxy chaining and many others.
It is free web debugging proxy tool that can be used for any browser, platforms or systems. The key features of this tool include performance testing, HTTP/HTTPS traffic recording, web session manipulation and security testing.
SSL/TLS Security Test By High-Tech Bridge
This free online service performs a detailed security analysis and configuration test of SSL/TLS implementation on any web server for compliance with NIST guidelines and PCI DSS requirements, as well as for various industry best-practices.
Rootkit Detectors To Hack File System
This is a directory and file integrity checker. It checks the veracity of files and notifies the user if there’s an issue.
AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment)
It is a directory and file integrity checker that helps in creating a database using the regular expression rules that it finds from the config files. This tool also supports message digest algorithms and file attributes like File type, Permissions, Inode, Uid, Gid, and others.
Firewalls: Firewalls monitor and control network traffic. A firewall is the quintessential security tool used by novices and tech experts alike. Here are a few of the best ones for hackers:
PF: OpenBSD Packet Filter
It is an OpenBSD system that enables filtering of TCP/IP traffic and also performs Network Address Translation. It also helps in conditioning and normalizing of TCP/IP traffic along with packet prioritization and bandwidth control.
Netfilter offers software for the packet filtering framework that works within the Linux 2.4.x and later series of the kernel. The software of Netfilter help in packet mangling including packet filtering along with network address and port translation.
Fuzzers To Search Vulnerabilities
Fuzzing is a term used by hackers for searching a computer system’s security vulnerabilities. Here is a list of a few:
It is a web application attack and audit framework that helps in auditing any threat that the web application experiences. This framework is built on Python and is easy-to-use and can be extended. It is licensed under GPLv2.0.
It’s a reconnaissance web application security tool. Some of its features are dictionary-based probes and recursive crawls. A website’s sitemap is eventually annotated for security assessments.
Wapiti is a web application vulnerability scanner that allows you to audit the security of the web applications that you are using. The scanning process is “black-box” type and detects the vulnerabilities like file disclosure, data injection, XSS injection, and many others.
It is an open source digital intervention or forensic toolkit. It runs on varied operating systems including Windows, Linux, OS X and many other Unix systems. It can be used for analyzing disk images along with in-depth analysis of file systems like FAT, Ext3, HFS+, UFS and NTFS.
This tool is designed in such a way that it helps in brute-forcing web applications. Wfuzz can be used for finding resources but it does not play any role in finding the links to directories, servlets, scripts and others. It has multiple injection points and allows multi-threading.
Forensics
These tools are used for computer forensics, especially to sniff out any trace of evidence existing in a particular computer system. Here are some of the most popular.
This is a Linux based incident response system. It is also used in system investigation and analysis along with data recovery and security auditing. The most recent version of this tool is based on Ubuntu that promises ease of use and stability.
Encase is the fastest and most comprehensive network forensic solution available in the market. It is created following the global standard of forensic investigation software. It has the capability of quickly gathering data from a wide variety of devices.
It is an open source forensic and intelligence application. It can be used for gathering information in all phases of security related work. It saves you time and money by performing the task on time in a smarter way.
Debuggers To Hack Running Programs
These tools are utilized for reverse engineering binary files for writing exploits and analyzing malware.
It is the tracing tool that helps the user to know the time that the data packets took to reach the host. This is an online application where you just need to place the host name or IP address and fetch the result.
It’s a powerful debugger for analyzing malware. Its unique features include an advanced user interface with heap analysis tool and function graphing.
Other Hacking Tools: Besides the aforementioned tools, there is myriad of hacking tools used by hackers. They don’t belong to a particular category, but are very popular among hackers nonetheless:
GDB is a GNU Project debugger. The unique feature of this debugger enables the user to see what is happening inside one program while it is being executed or check a program at the moment of the crash.
It is a featured network utility tool. It has the capability to read and write data across all network connections that uses TCP/IP protocol. It is a reliable back-end tool that can be easily and directly driven by other scripts and programs.
It is a tracert or IP tracking tool that displays the path of internet packets through which it traversed to reach the specific destination. It identifies the IP address of each hop along the way it reaches the destination.
It is a free and open source software command-line tool that transfers data with URL syntax. It supports HTTP/HTTPS, Gopher, FTPS, LDAP, POP3 and many others. It can run under a wide variety of operating systems. The recent stable version is v7.37.1.
It is a complete searching and indexing system that is used for a domain or internet. It works on both Linux and Windows system. It, however, does not replace the internet-wide search systems like Google, Infoseek, AltaVista and Lycos.
Encryption Tools
Times are changing and spying has become a common phenomenon everywhere. There have been increasing instances where even the governments have been found to be spying on their citizens from time to time. This is one of the prime reasons why the importance of Encryption has increased manifold. Encryption tools are very important because they keep the data safe by encrypting it so that even if someone accesses the data, they can’t get through the data unless they know how to decrypt the data. These tools use algorithm schemes to encode the data to prevent unauthorized access to the encrypted data.
Some of the popular Encryption Tools will be discussed in this article:-
OpenSSH is the short name for Open Secure Shell and is a free software suite which is used to make your network connections secured. It uses the SSH protocol to provide encrypted communication sessions in a computer network. It was designed originally as an alternative to the Secure Shell Software developed by SSH Communications Security. The tool was designed as a part of the OpenBSD project.
TrueCrypt is open source encryption tool which can encrypt a partition in the Windows environment (except Windows 8); it’s equipped for creating a virtual encrypted disk in a file. Moreover, it has the capability to encrypt the complete storage device. TrueCrypt can run on different operating systems like Linux, Microsoft Windows, and OSX. TrueCrypt stores the encryption keys in the RAM of the computer.
It an open source encryption tool available on both UNIX and Windows operating system. It is a free implementation of SSH (Secure Shell) and Telnet for both Windows as well as UNIX. The beauty of this tool is that it supports many network protocols like Telnet, SCP, rlogin, SSH and raw socket connection. The word PuTTY has no specific meaning, however as in UNIX tradition, tty is a terminal name.
Tor is a free encryption tool and has the capability to provide online anonymity as well as censorship resistance. Internal traffic is directed through a free network which consists of more than five thousand relays so that the user’s actual location can be hidden. It is difficult to track the Internet activities like visiting websites and instant messages; the most important goal of this tool is to ensure the personal privacy of the users.
OpenSSL is an open source encryption tool which implements the TLS and SSL protocols. OpenSSL’s core library is written in the C programming language. The fundamental cryptographic functions are implemented by it. OpenSSL versions are available for operating systems like UNIX, Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X. The project was undertaken in 1988 with the objective of inventing free encryption tools for the programs being used on the internet.
KeePass is an open source as well as a free password management tool for the Microsoft Windows as well as unofficial ports for operating systems such as iOS, Linux, Android, Mac OS X and Windows Phone. All the usernames, passwords, and all other fields are stored by KeePass in a secured encrypted database. This database, in turn, is protected by a single password.
It is an open source tool for the implementation of virtual private network techniques so that secure site-to-site or point-to-point connections using routers or bridges are possible, also remote access is possible. OpenVPN offers the users a secure authentication process by using secret keys which are pre-shared.
Stunnel is a multi-platform open source tool which is used to ensure that both the clients and the servers get secured encrypted connections. This encryption software can operate on a number of operating system platforms like Windows as well as all operating systems which are UNIX-like. Stunnel depends upon a distinct library like SSLeay or OpenSSL to implement the protocols (SSL or TLS)
