Hardware Hacking and Social Engineering Tools in Kali Linux

Hardware Hacking tools provide you with the API libraries and developer tools necessary to build, test, or debug apps for androids. It is a tool for re-engineering android app files which can be useful for an attacker to perform an attack on a victim. Social-Engineering is nothing but one person trying to coax another person to perform acts that he normally wouldn’t do is called social engineering. Many security communities believe that social engineering is one of the biggest risks that an organization can face. SET categorizes attacks by attack types(web, email, and USB-based). It uses email, spoofed websites, and other vectors to reach human targets and trick individuals to compromise sensitive information.

Kali Linux offers a bunch of different Hardware and Social Engineering Tools which are used by attackers to perform attacks. To find these Tools you can simply go to your Linux Environment and go on applications there you will find the hardware hacking and social engineering tools listed.

 

Hardware Hacking Tools

Hardware hacking means when someone makes changes or alterations to a piece of existing hardware to utilize it in a way that was not proposed. The goal of these attacks is to obtain information, make network access easier, and sometimes take control over hardware or software to exploit or other illegal uses.

Some of the popular hardware hacking tools that are used with Kali Linux are:

Tool 1: Rubber ducky

You must have heard of this device, it is a USB thumb drive that simulates a HUD device such as a keyboard, and uses different scripts that attacks can write and deploy using this small device in any system. Rubber Ducky can be used to write scripts into the target system with these scripts attackers can gather information and sensitive credentials like passwords and many more, Rubber Ducky supports keystroking of prewritten keystrokes up to 1000 words per minute. with rubber ducky it is easy to deploy payloads in the victim’s computer what the attacker needs to do is just plug the USB somehow while performing Social Engineering on victims.

Rubber Ducky USB device

Tool 2: WIFI Adapters

we all know what WIFI adapters are, they are used to make the systems use WIFI services much more easily and fast. but there is some specific type of adapters that supports monitor mode, with this mode they can monitor the network traffic around them and also perform several attacks on the wireless attacks to different networks. when it comes to WiFi hacking the best choice is to buy a good adapter that supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz and also supports monitor mode. Below are some best-rated WiFi adapters which you can consider. all of these WiFi adapters support packet injection, and monitor mode and are fully compatible with Kali Linux.

1. Alfa-AWUS036NH
2. Alfa AWUS036NEH
3. TP-LINK TL-WN722N 2.4GHz (Version 1)
4. TP-LINK TL 5.0 GHz(Version 2/3)

Tool 3: Wireshark

It is a powerful software that can be used for hardware hacking, it is a protocol analyzer that is found in Kali Linux. it is used to perform analysis of various protocols which also allow traffic capturing. Wireshark allows users to capture the raw network traffic from any interface but in some cases, it will require them to get superuser privileges or root privileges. Wireshark is a tool that uses Pcap(packet capture) to capture packets from network interfaces, while doing so this tool can only capture those network packets which support Pcap.

Wireshark offers many interfaces to capture networks like Ethernet, LAN, WAN, MAN, and all wireless networks also, this tool has its edge on the GUI as it is very easy to use and beginner friendly.

 

Tool 4: Aircrack-ng

Again it is a very famous software that can be used for hardware hacking, it is mainly used to hack WIFI networks. this tool performs network monitoring and packet capturing, attacking by performing replay attacks, de-authentication attacks, and creation of fake access points. It is also considered a complete tool for assessing WIFI network security.

It basically focuses on these different areas of WIFI security:

1. Monitoring: This feature allows users to capture the packets that are being transferred over the network.
2. Attacking: This tool can perform a bunch of networking attacks on wireless networks.
3. Testing: Checking WIFI cards and Driver’s capabilities.
4. Cracking: This tool can also be used for cracking the password of Wireless networks with different security like WPA2. 

Tool 5: LAN Turtle 

This USB tool works perfectly with Kali Linux, it can be connected to the LAN and administered remotely. it can also be used for intercepting network traffic inbound to a target computer. This tool comes under the category of network adapters which is used to perform capturing attacks like Monitoring Browser traffic, Extracting data out of a network, and DNS poisoning with this the tool does not interfere with or disrupt the normal connected network which is better for avoiding detection.

Usage of Hardware Hacking

Example 1: Hardware Hacking Through Wireshark

As we know Wireshark is a packet analyzer used to monitor or sniff the network traffic let’s see how you can capture network traffic with Wireshark.

Step 1: Go to your Linux Environment and search for Wireshark in your applications, click and open it.

 

Step 2: In the above image you can see on eth0. We have network traffic going on as my browser is opened. Double Click on eth0.

 

In this image you can see that Wireshark is capturing my Network Traffic, you can see the stats of my network in the image, This is how easy it is to monitor traffic with Wireshark but if you are trying to capture the traffic of someone else you need to learn ARP Poisoning so that you will be able to capture their traffic also. 

Step 3: With that being said, let’s save the captured data into our system you can save it with a single click on the option above, which says save capture.

 

And after saving you can go and see it anytime for further analysis of the network.

Social Engineering Tools

Linux offers a bunch of social engineering tools that can be used to perform some of the most common and popular attacks like phishing. you can in the image below we can find these tools in the applications under the social engineering tools categories.

 

Some of the tools that are often used and popular for social engineering are:

Tool 1: Maltego

It is an OSINT(open source intelligence) investigation tool that shows the information that is linked with each other. This tool is used for finding the relations between people and various other information, like email addresses, social profiles, and many more. Maltego tool offers users to analyze real-time data and helps to gather information from a domain or website, This tool enables users to track data and find connections and relations between different types of data. It uses Graphical data analysis and supports multiple formats of data like Images(bmp, png, and jpg), Generating PDF reports, and Tabular formats like CSV, XLS and graphicML also. Maltego tools are also considered under Intelligence and cyber forensics.

Tool 2: Social engineering Toolkit 

It is the most used and popular tool for social engineering among hackers, it is an open-source, python based toolkit that is used for penetration testing. It offers different methods and implementation strategies to perform attacks. This includes tools for website hacking, phishing, and many more to make fake websites just like original ones which let users believe that they are visiting the original websites.

This kit almost covers all the attacks that one can perform with social engineering skills below is the list of all attacks SET offers:

1. Spear phishing attack
2. Website attacks
3. Infectious media generator
4. Payload creation and setting listener
5. Arduino-based hardware attacks
6. Wireless access points attacks
7. QR code-based attacks
8. PowerShell Attacks

Tool 3: MSF payload creator 

This is a tool that is used by hackers to generate various Basic interpreter Payloads with the help of MSF venom which comes under the Metasploit framework. it is a wrapper to generate multiple types of payloads, based on user preferences. This tool is very easy to use and comes in handy when you practice using the Metasploit framework for exploitation. MSF venom comes with Metasploit Framework and it is a standard command line interface that allows users to make or generate Basic payloads for platforms like Windows systems, Unix systems, and Android, and many more like backend servers which make this tool so important.

This tool comes in handy when you want to generate basic payloads quickly without altering so many options and parameters. it can also be used to generate a Reverse TCP shell from a running host.

Example 2: Hardware Hacking Through SET (Social Engineering Toolkit)

Well, SET can be used in many ways for outstanding purposes in ethical hacking. we are going to look at a simple example where, we will be sending a malicious website link to our victim’s Gmail address, which can lead the victim to reveal credentials, giving access to an attacker without knowing it. To do so we are going to use SET which comes pre-installed in Kali Linux.

We are performing a Mass Mailer Attack with the help of SET.

Step 1: Open the Linux environment and open the terminal, then type setoolkit to open options.

root#-/ setoolkit

 

Step 2: Choose option 5 to select Mass Mailer Attacker and you will get the output same as below:

 

Step 3: We will Choose option 1, to perform an E-mail attack for a single email address.

 

Within this option you can see in the above image we need to provide the target email address, and then we have to specify from where we want to perform the attack.

Step 4: We are going to use option 1, to perform an attack from our own email address to the victim’s address.

 

After choosing option 1, you need to provide some information as per the requirements. provide your email address. provide the name of your target will be shown, from where the email came. Now you need to choose whether you want to prioritize our message you can type yes. You will see a bunch of other options like attaching an inline file, or a separate file, you can attach if you want but we are only showing you how to perform this attack practically so we are going to avoid these options for now. provide the subject for your attack email, this can be anything that interests the victim to click on the link. select the message format, between plain and HTML you can simply go with plain.

Step 5: Now you can type the body of the email basically what your email will consist of, after completing it type END and hit enter.

 

In the above image, you can see the victim received the email we sent, so this is how you can perform an Email Attack with the help of the SET kit.

Conclusion

Hardware hacking and Social Engineering both of these methods are intersected with each other many times when you perform different types of attacks that require physical presence or connections like plugging in a USB or Tailgating attack and many more. No wonder both of these Hacking tools are used widely by hackers, some tools that are not listed but cover both categories can be NMAP, ZENMAP, Pipal, Maltego, and many more tools are out there which can be explored and learned easily. SET is the most used toolkit by hackers because it provides almost all the attacks which can be performed against a victim.