For this book, Kali Linux will be our platform of choice. Kali Linux is a free penetration testing distribution platform that offers a vast range of tools, such as Metasploit for network penetration testing, Nmap for port and vulnerability scanning, Aircrack-Ng for wireless network testing, the Social engineering toolkit (SET) for social engineering attacks, and many more.
Kali Linux is a maintained distribution; this means that it's constantly updated and maintained. At the time of writing, the current version of Kali Linux is 2019.1.
Version 2019.1 introduced a massive update to Metasploit (Metasploit will be covered in Chapter 5, Diving into the Metasploit Framework), including bug fixes, kernel updates, and more.
Kali Linux version 2019.1 is used in this book; note that some of the exercises may differ if they are performed on different versions...
