Top 1-10: Core Penetration Testing Tools#
-
Metasploit
Function: The world's leading exploit framework, integrating the entire penetration testing process (reconnaissance, attack, post-exploitation).
Scenario: Red team operations, vulnerability validation, automated attack chain construction.
Official Website -
Burp Suite
Function: The "Swiss Army Knife" for web application security testing, with new API security engine and AI logic vulnerability scanning, proxy interception, API security testing.
Scenario: Dynamic application security testing (DAST), API vulnerability discovery, testing for high-risk business systems like finance/e-commerce.
Official Website -
Nmap
Function: Network scanning, service detection, vulnerability fingerprinting.
Upgrade: AI-driven scanning strategy optimization (2025 version enhancement).
Official Website -
Kali Linux
Function: Integrated environment for penetration testing, pre-installed with 600+ tools (such as Aircrack-ng, SQLMap).
Highlight: New cloud-native penetration toolkit.
Official Website -
OWASP ZAP
Function: Open-source web application scanning, automated vulnerability detection (including zero-day vulnerability mode library).
Scenario: DevSecOps integration, continuous security testing.
Official Website -
Cobalt Strike
Function: Advanced threat simulation, collaborative red team operations, phishing attack design.
Trend: Strengthening capabilities against AI defenses by 2025.
Official Website -
Wireshark
Function: Traffic analysis, protocol reverse engineering, abnormal traffic detection.
Upgrade: Support for deep analysis of 5G/IoT protocols.
Official Website -
Shodan
Function: Exposed asset search, global networked device security assessment.
Scenario: Exposure analysis for IoT/OT systems.
Official Website -
Hashcat
Function: GPU-accelerated password cracking, supporting new encryption algorithms.
Trend: Quantum-resistant password testing under quantum computing threats.
Official Website -
CloudSploit
Function: Cloud environment configuration auditing (AWS/Azure/GCP), detecting IAM and bucket policy risks.
Scenario: Cloud-native penetration testing.
Official Website
Top 11-20: Specialized Testing Tools#
-
sqlmap
Function: The king of automated SQL injection attacks, supporting advanced techniques like blind injection and time-based blind injection.
Official Website -
Aircrack-ng
Function: Wi-Fi security assessment, supporting WPA3 protocol cracking.
Official Website -
Mobile Security Framework (MobSF)
Function: Static/dynamic analysis of mobile applications (iOS/Android), SDK vulnerability detection, one-click detection of Android/iOS application code vulnerabilities, SDK risks, privacy compliance issues.
Official Website -
Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET)
Function: Phishing attack simulation, malicious document generation (2025 version integrates AI voice cloning).
Official Website -
Invicti
Function: Enterprise-level automated scanning, combining DAST and IAST technologies.
Official Website -
BloodHound
Function: Visualization of Active Directory permission attack paths, locating privilege escalation vulnerabilities within the domain.
Official Website -
Ghidra (alternative to IDA Pro)
Function: Open-source reverse engineering, supporting binary code analysis and vulnerability discovery.
Official Website -
Nessus
Function: Vulnerability management, compliance checks (supports SCAP benchmarks).
Official Website -
Frida
Function: Dynamic code instrumentation, real-time debugging of mobile/desktop applications.
Official Website -
Elastic Security (alternative to traditional SIEM)
Function: Threat hunting, log analysis, EDR integration.
Official Website
Top 21-30: Emerging and Auxiliary Tools#
-
Censys (alternative to DNSDumpster)
Function: Internet asset mapping, exposure risk management.
Official Website -
Sn1per
Function: Automated attack surface enumeration, integrating tools like Nmap and Metasploit, one-click penetration report generation.
Official Website -
Impacket
Function: Network protocol attack library (such as SMB, Kerberos protocol exploitation), breaking through domain control defenses.
Official Website -
TruffleHog
Function: Scanning code repositories for sensitive information (API keys, credential leaks), deep scanning of GitHub and GitLab, detecting hardcoded keys and sensitive information.
Official Website -
Maltego
Function: Threat intelligence link analysis, visualizing target network topology, generating attack surface heat maps.
Official Website -
John the Ripper
Function: Multi-mode password cracking (supports biometric hash simulation).
Official Website -
Aquatone
Function: Subdomain takeover detection, automatic detection of failed DNS resolutions, web asset visualization.
Official Website -
OSINT Framework (alternative to Hunter/Skrapp)
Function: Open-source intelligence aggregation, collecting email/personnel/domain information.
Official Website -
Velociraptor
Function: Endpoint forensics and real-time response (combining DFIR and penetration testing).
Official Website -
Atomic Red Team
Function: MITRE ATT&CK tactic simulation, blue team/red team adversarial testing.
Official Website