Kali Linux

A beginner GNU/Linux course built on Kali Linux 2022.1, from the shell and the filesystem through text processing to packet capture and DNS.

I wrote these notes in April 2022 while teaching Kali Linux 2022.1 at colleges in Montreal. The students were beginners taking computer networking courses, so the course assumes no prior Linux at all. It starts from what a kernel and a shell are, installs the distribution in a virtual machine, then works through the command line, Debian package management, searching, piping, text processing, and process control, before finishing on the network with Netcat, packet capture, port scanning, and DNS.

NoteNotes from 2022

These pages were first published on smenode.com, and they are kept close to how I wrote them at the time. The wording is mine from back then and the command output comes from Kali Linux 2022.1 as it shipped, so package versions, kernel versions, and a few command defaults have moved on since. Each page carries the date I wrote it. The Linux underneath has not changed nearly as much as the version numbers suggest.

Topics

Introduction to Open Source Operating Systems
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How Unix, the GNU project, and the Linux kernel came together, what a shell and a kernel each do, and where Kali Linux fits in.

Apr 1, 2022

Operating System Installation
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Where an operating system can be deployed, covering bare metal, dual boot, type 1 and type 2 hypervisors, containers, and WSL 2.

Apr 1, 2022

Kali Linux Installation
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Installing the Kali Linux 2022.1 virtual machine on VMware Workstation Player, with bridged networking and a static IP address.

Apr 1, 2022

Access Methods
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Reaching a Kali Linux machine over console, VNC, and SSH, plus enabling the SSH service and checking that it listens on TCP port 22.

Apr 2, 2022
 
Becoming Familiar with Kali Linux
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Command structure, manual pages, sudo, the filesystem hierarchy, absolute and relative paths, keyboard shortcuts, and managing files.

Apr 2, 2022
 
Debian Package Management
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Managing software on Kali Linux with dpkg and APT, covering apt update, apt upgrade, apt install, and apt remove with purge.

Apr 3, 2022
 
Searching Files
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Locating files on Kali Linux with find, locate, and which, and telling external commands apart from shell built-ins.

Apr 5, 2022
 
Piping and Redirecting
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Standard input, output, and error streams, redirecting them to files with the redirection operators, and chaining commands with pipes.

Apr 5, 2022

MAC Flood with macof
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Flooding the CAM table of a Cisco Catalyst switch with macof from Kali Linux, and the switch features that counter the attack.

Apr 7, 2022
 
Working with Text
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Regular expression basics followed by grep, sed, cut, and awk for filtering and editing text, and a first look at the vi editor.

Apr 7, 2022
 
Managing Processes
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Listing what runs on a Kali Linux system with ps and its switches, then stopping a process by its PID with the kill command.

Apr 8, 2022
 
Downloading Files
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Fetching files from the web on Kali Linux with wget and curl, including saving a download under a filename of your choosing.

Apr 8, 2022
 
Netcat and Socket Statistics
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Using Netcat as a client and as a listener, transferring a file between two hosts, and reading open sockets with the ss command.

Apr 8, 2022
 
Kali Linux Networking
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Checking host and time settings with hostnamectl and timedatectl, then reading and changing interface addresses with the ip command.

Apr 8, 2022

Traffic Capture and Port Scan
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Capturing packets with tcpdump and Wireshark, using capture and display filters, and scanning TCP and UDP ports with Nmap.

Apr 8, 2022

Kali Linux as a DNS Client
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How DNS resolves a fully qualified domain name, the common record types, and querying name servers with nslookup, host, and dig.

Apr 8, 2022
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