Links to security tools:

A large collection of tools can be found on the Hack Tool Repository

Once every couple of years the readers of the nmap hackers list are asked to compose their list of favorite tools. The resulting list is a top 100 of network security tools, which can be found at http://sectools.org/. The top 10 from the 2006 survey are displayed below:

  1. Nessus : Premier UNIX vulnerability assessment tool
  2. Wireshark : Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together
  3. Snort : A Everyone's favorite open source IDS
  4. Netcat : The network Swiss army knife
  5. Metasploit Framework : Hack the Planet
  6. Hping2 : A network probing utility like ping on steroids
  7. Kismet : A powerful wireless sniffer
  8. Tcpdump : The classic sniffer for network monitoring and data acquisition
  9. Cain and Abel : The top password recovery tool for Windows
  10. John the Ripper : A powerful, flexible, and fast multi-platform password hash cracker

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