Performing vulnerability assessment or a penetration test involves a series of tasks that need to be performed with the help of multiple tools and utilities. For every task involved in the process, there are tools available, both commercial as well as freeware and open source. It all depends on our choice of tool that suits best as per the context.
For performing an end-to-end assessment, we can either have individual tools downloaded as and when required or we can use a distribution such as Kali Linux that comes with all required tools pre-installed. Kali Linux is a stable, flexible, powerful, and proven platform for penetration testing. It has a baseline of tools that are required to perform various tasks across all phases of penetration testing. It also allows you to easily add tools and utilities that aren't part of the default installation...
