Parrot vs Kali

[Decoy]

Does anyone have experience with Parrot OS? I've used Kali/Backtrack plenty over the years, but I've recently been exploring other options. Parrot looks good. I've read some articles, and they seem biased based on who wrote it.

[Dave-ee Jones]

Kali built for hacking, Parrot built for anti-hacking? That's what it looks like...

[Decoy]

1 hour ago, Dave-ee Jones said:

Kali built for hacking, Parrot built for anti-hacking? That's what it looks like...

From what I can tell (and read) it started from a Kali repository. It looks like a lot of the same tools actually.

[b0N3z]

i used parrot for a while, seems that there are some tools on parrot and some on kali but both being a debian base OS it seems that some programs install differently between the two.  Parrot is not logged in as a root user but as a regular user that still needs to use sudo to run root commands.  Parrot, it seems is branching out more into the User Friendly mode with a couple different Versions of the OS like pentesting, multimedia, cloud and so on.  Ive always returned to kali becuase that is what I know best

[Decoy]

 

1 hour ago, b0N3z said:

i used parrot for a while, seems that there are some tools on parrot and some on kali but both being a debian base OS it seems that some programs install differently between the two.  Parrot is not logged in as a root user but as a regular user that still needs to use sudo to run root commands.  Parrot, it seems is branching out more into the User Friendly mode with a couple different Versions of the OS like pentesting, multimedia, cloud and so on.  Ive always returned to kali becuase that is what I know best

Yeah, I've been using Kali for a few years. I'm going to Branch out a little though I think. I've honestly never really considered other options. I didn't even realize there were so many:

https://fossbytes.com/10-best-operating-systems-for-ethical-hacking-and-penetration-testing-2016/

Some of these I've heard of, but others I never knew about.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Decoy

[b0N3z]

its definitely good to branch out you never know, you find something you like better or works better for you.

[Decoy]

Apparently Parrot has Nvidia drivers pre-installed too. That's an added bonus.

[digip]

Kali (including Backtrack) have had support for Nvidia stuff for a while now, just not widely known I guess. Getting things to work is always tuff if you don't know where to start though, and I'm no expert when it comes to driver hell in linux. Fortunately we have a post for users with supported Nvidia cards - https://www.kali.org/news/cloud-cracking-with-cuda-gpu/ not just for cloud cracking(which is the main article topic) but in the post it also explains how to do this on a home machine and getting the drivers to work.

Even though I mainly use Kali in a VM, I find myself only using the same handful of tools: nmap, unicorn scanner, masscan, netdiscover, gobuster, john, curl, wget, nc/ncat/netcat, some php,apache and bash scripted stuff, and maybe sqlmap and occasionally nikto if I get stuck and forget to look for something, then python and perl for TTY shells. That list right there is like 99% of what I use, which honestly, can be installed on any linux system. Oh, and a text editor with line numbering and syntax highlighting helps. I know how to use Vi/Vim minimally, but I'd rather use nano, or just a GUI text editor.

Beyond that i like to play with some of the other tools but I generally have no idea how most of them work, and just mess around with some wifi stuff like ghost-phisher and aircrack. Most of the "hacking" stuff I do, is related to LAN based CTF's in my home lab virtual machines, which don't require me to use wifi hacks or leave the home network. I don't own any of the Pineapples or USB tools(although I do have an original ducky somewhere packed away from Derbycon 1). 

I could switch to another distro, but honestly, Kali has won us over in this house. My wife was using uBUntu, but she and the and kids now use Kali as a daily driver on the living room desktop machine, and all have low priv users on the machine. I even managed to get flash working on it so my wife can play farmville and the kids can do their school stuff that requires flash fro their sites, so for that itself, I leave it alone. They know how to use it and haven't had any issue like leaving windows behind. If i didn't need it for work for Photoshop, or gaming, I'd move to a native install now, but I can't see that happening considering I literally need windows because of what I do for my job. If photoshop CS5 and Illustrator CS6 ran on Linux, I'd move away from windows. I do not care for MACs though, even if they are more *nix based under the hood, I can't see spending good money for the same hardware that runs my PC for a fraction of the cost.

[Dave-ee Jones]

1 hour ago, digip said:

-snip-

Yeah, I've always used Windows (the rest of my family uses Mac - and iPhones whereas I have Android - I love customising/hacking my own stuff for more customisation), and I only use Kali/Debian for recovering PCs or in VMs. However I always carry around a Multiboot USB which has Debian, Kali, Windows 7/10 and Hiren's Boot CD on it (which is awesome!). 

Can't say I would use Kali as an everyday OS though..just doesn't really suit..I'll stick with Windows there :P

Plus, can't play Rocket League on a Linux distro..

[PoSHMagiC0de]

I used Kali for a bit but now I use Parrot as my primary OS on my laptop.  I like it because you do not run as root as default.  They are both the same because parrot also pulls from the Kali repo.  It uses the Mate desktop.

Kali is good too but did not stick with it only cause I wanted a OS I could do other things in not as root.  I did create a non root user but found myself having to sudo for commands I would normally not have to in Linux.  So, I went Parrot because I get a nice Linux distro to use for normal stuff with the added benefit of being a pentest rig when I want it to be.

[digip]

5 hours ago, PoSHMagiC0de said:

I used Kali for a bit but now I use Parrot as my primary OS on my laptop.  I like it because you do not run as root as default.  They are both the same because parrot also pulls from the Kali repo.  It uses the Mate desktop.

Kali is good too but did not stick with it only cause I wanted a OS I could do other things in not as root.  I did create a non root user but found myself having to sudo for commands I would normally not have to in Linux.  So, I went Parrot because I get a nice Linux distro to use for normal stuff with the added benefit of being a pentest rig when I want it to be.

You can add new users and add sudo to the users. This is what I did on our home desktop the family uses. All lower priv users with sudo, no one uses root but me when I update the machine. Kali just doesn't force the use of a non-root user on install, like most other linux distros do, due to it's main focus on penetration testing. It's come a long way though with regards to desktop user land. I haven't really found anything that won't run on it yet. It shares the same base as Debian, just with the added Kernel tweaks and tools specific to pentesting, but you can install damn near anything in the debian repos without issue for most things. Just don't try merging or adding foreign branches like uBuntu for example(which you really shouldn't do with any linux distro, mix and match sources)

[PoSHMagiC0de]

2 hours ago, digip said:

You can add new users and add sudo to the users. This is what I did on our home desktop the family uses. All lower priv users with sudo, no one uses root but me when I update the machine. Kali just doesn't force the use of a non-root user on install, like most other linux distros do, due to it's main focus on penetration testing. It's come a long way though with regards to desktop user land. I haven't really found anything that won't run on it yet. It shares the same base as Debian, just with the added Kernel tweaks and tools specific to pentesting, but you can install damn near anything in the debian repos without issue for most things. Just don't try merging or adding foreign branches like uBuntu for example(which you really shouldn't do with any linux distro, mix and match sources)

Yeah, i did that for Kali as far as setup a non-root user with sudo access and a shell but found myself having to run sudo still for a lot of non-root commands like ifconfig still.  Maybe was still missing something in my path or something but it wasn't jiving for me as an every day linux distro.  I know people will say it is not meant to be a everyday use distro but was working with it.  On my home machine I already use a completely separate drive to run Linux on that I physically have to plug in.  The other drive is Windows 10 of course.  Gotta have the games.  I just gave Parrot a whirl a few months back and never removed it since it has been working out so well.  I might be liking the MATE desktop too.  I have Kali on my Pi but thinking of giving the Parrot ARM architecture a try too to see what is up.  Only issue I have so far is Parrot is on Debian 9 so I cannot install Linux version of Powershell due to Powershell needing old libraries I just will not butcher my OS repo to do and for any .net core stuff I had to find a specific version to get it up an running but navigating the current .net core repo is a maze right now anyway so I expected that.

Parrot itself is actually made up of the Kali repo.  I didn't add Kali.  Parrot's repo is built partially from Kali I am guessing.  You can see it when you do upgrades as some of the packages have the kali name on them, plus they mention it on their site.  So I think of Parrot as a starter pentest OS being you are forced onto a non-root user (which is good for new users) but still have all the tools of Kali.  I like it because it feels more like a desktop OS with features.  :-)

 

[PoSHMagiC0de]

9 hours ago, Dave-ee Jones said:

Yeah, I've always used Windows (the rest of my family uses Mac - and iPhones whereas I have Android - I love customising/hacking my own stuff for more customisation), and I only use Kali/Debian for recovering PCs or in VMs. However I always carry around a Multiboot USB which has Debian, Kali, Windows 7/10 and Hiren's Boot CD on it (which is awesome!). 

Can't say I would use Kali as an everyday OS though..just doesn't really suit..I'll stick with Windows there :P

Plus, can't play Rocket League on a Linux distro..

For my linux usb I actually installed the OS on the USB so I could update it...also encrypted it too in case I lose it.  Easy to do.

On Windows use Virtual Box.  You will have to add the extension pack because you will need to enable USB and add your device to the VM list of USB devices so it is seen during bootup.  Set the VM to have no hard drive.  Set the linux distro ISO of your choice as your boot CD and boot the VM.  Go through the installation of the new OS but you will be using your USB drive as the HD.  When done it will not boot up in the VM but if you place it in a machine and boot it, it should boot up and you will have access to do apt update and add stuff to it.  I always have one with sleuthkit and autopsy for HD recoveries.  DD_Rescue is good too.

Note: Before doing updates to the USB I would boot it in a machine where you shut the internal drivers off in the bios.  Why? So you don't get an instance of the resident OS (like Windows) in your Grub menu.

 

[digip]

2 minutes ago, PoSHMagiC0de said:

 So I think of Parrot as a starter pentest OS being you are forced onto a non-root user (which is good for new users) but still have all the tools of Kali.  I like it because it feels more like a desktop OS with features.  :-)

Thing is, those tools can run on any distro. Not specific to Kali, but what is pre-installed, has been tested or configured to work as intended, as where on other systems they may require more dependencies or as you mentioned, outdated sources or incompatible with your current configuration. It's not for everyone, but I find there isn't anything I've needed that it couldn't do so far, other than my day job stuff requiring Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. If the Adobe suite moved to linux, I'd probably leave windows, other than making a high end gaming rig dedicated for it, which right now, is more or less just my work rig with 2 games on it since I don't want to have a lot of that on the same machine. It's work provided, so technically shouldn't have that on there to begin with, but after moving few times in last couple of years, my old machine is still packed away with all my other gaming stuff.

[PoSHMagiC0de]

1 minute ago, digip said:

Thing is, those tools can run on any distro. Not specific to Kali, but what is pre-installed, has been tested or configured to work as intended, as where on other systems they may require more dependencies or as you mentioned, outdated sources or incompatible with your current configuration. It's not for everyone, but I find there isn't anything I've needed that it couldn't do so far, other than my day job stuff requiring Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. If the Adobe suite moved to linux, I'd probably leave windows, other than making a high end gaming rig dedicated for it, which right now, is more or less just my work rig with 2 games on it since I don't want to have a lot of that on the same machine. It's work provided, so technically shouldn't have that on there to begin with, but after moving few times in last couple of years, my old machine is still packed away with all my other gaming stuff.

I have been saying that too.  If I could run all my games from Linux, I probably would never have my Windows 10 drive hooked up to my home machine.

[Decoy]

2 hours ago, PoSHMagiC0de said:

I have been saying that too.  If I could run all my games from Linux, I probably would never have my Windows 10 drive hooked up to my home machine.

Same. I have to use Windows for some work stuff, otherwise I'd be full Linux. Has anyone tried running Windows strictly through a VM? I've contemplated doing that before. It's be nice if I could create a VM based on my current machine, and just use that.

[PoSHMagiC0de]

2 hours ago, Decoy said:

Same. I have to use Windows for some work stuff, otherwise I'd be full Linux. Has anyone tried running Windows strictly through a VM? I've contemplated doing that before. It's be nice if I could create a VM based on my current machine, and just use that.

I am doing that now for my laptop.  Have 2 vms for windows.  1 for my work apps and MS Office that works only under windows and one for testing against with snapshots.  Main OS is ParrotOS.  I run an I5 with 8gb of ram (maxed out for this model dell) and a 500 gb ssd.  Boots in 2sec.  Windows boots in 10sec in virtualbox.

The BBTPS was developed on my laptop on Parrot and tested against my test windows vm via network before trying on Bash Bunny.

[Decoy]

1 hour ago, PoSHMagiC0de said:

I am doing that now for my laptop.  Have 2 vms for windows.  1 for my work apps and MS Office that works only under windows and one for testing against with snapshots.  Main OS is ParrotOS.  I run an I5 with 8gb of ram (maxed out for this model dell) and a 500 gb ssd.  Boots in 2sec.  Windows boots in 10sec in virtualbox.

The BBTPS was developed on my laptop on Parrot and tested against my test windows vm via network before trying on Bash Bunny.

Awesome. Did you make an image of an old dedicated Windows machine? What did you use to do that? Or did you do a fresh start?

[digip]

4 hours ago, Decoy said:

Same. I have to use Windows for some work stuff, otherwise I'd be full Linux. Has anyone tried running Windows strictly through a VM? I've contemplated doing that before. It's be nice if I could create a VM based on my current machine, and just use that.

I've had several VM's of windows machines over the years, from Win95, 98, XP, 2000, 2003 server, Vista, 7 and 8. Currently, I have one win 7 dual booted with early Kali 2.0 Sana which was one of the first Kali releases. All in VMware Workstation, which I really need to update to the latest. I just don't have the money to splurge on stuff right now. On my old back which is still packed away, I have most of the above I mentioned, and can run several of them at the same time with no issue, although Vista is a hog as well as Server 2003. Rest run pretty smoothly and everything works, including Aero in Vista and 7. The 8 machine was more or less when it came out and I was testing and didn't like it back then. Have it on a laptop now that came pre-installed, but it's touch screen, so made more sense to leave it with 8.

[PoSHMagiC0de]

43 minutes ago, Decoy said:

Awesome. Did you make an image of an old dedicated Windows machine? What did you use to do that? Or did you do a fresh start?

Fresh start.

Built the machine, applied key I had from old machine that is running Linux (never ran Windows well).  Installed my copy of Office.  Updated to latest at time.  Installed Chrome.  Made a copy of the VM to my backup drive for safe keeping.  Cloned the original to make my test machine since I wanted office too for macro tests.  On my work one I put all my work stuff on it.  In the test one I have sysinternals and other stuff.  Both running Avast.

I always run both off of snapshots.  My permanent storage is a shared drive on the Linux OS.  If I need to do updates, I revert to the original, remove the snapshot and then update the original before making a new snapshot to continue on.  Works out good too if you have different customers and need a windows machine.  You can make a new snapshot (I use my test vm for this since it has no personal data on it at its base) of the machine to preserve the base and then can join their domain without affecting the original image and get all their policy pushes.  When done you can unjoin to clean up their AD and then roll back to the original or if you are returning you can make a snapshot of that instance and then roll back to the original if you need to make another for another site.  Yeah, I jury rigged a version of Qubes so to speak.  Qubes OS never worked right for all the things I needed to do but that doesn't make it bad.  I just had issues with my peripherals.

[Dave-ee Jones]

On 7/1/2017 at 1:37 AM, PoSHMagiC0de said:

For my linux usb I actually installed the OS on the USB so I could update it...also encrypted it too in case I lose it.  Easy to do.

On Windows use Virtual Box.  You will have to add the extension pack because you will need to enable USB and add your device to the VM list of USB devices so it is seen during bootup.  Set the VM to have no hard drive.  Set the linux distro ISO of your choice as your boot CD and boot the VM.  Go through the installation of the new OS but you will be using your USB drive as the HD.  When done it will not boot up in the VM but if you place it in a machine and boot it, it should boot up and you will have access to do apt update and add stuff to it.  I always have one with sleuthkit and autopsy for HD recoveries.  DD_Rescue is good too.

Note: Before doing updates to the USB I would boot it in a machine where you shut the internal drivers off in the bios.  Why? So you don't get an instance of the resident OS (like Windows) in your Grub menu.

 

I know how to make a VM, and I use VMware's Workstation Player. VirtualBox is a bit..limited..and buggy.

Your Linux USB - is that persistent? I wanna know how to make one of those - especially a Multiboot USB that can persist with multiple OS'. Would be neat, and I could customise the OS' images persistently so I can boot them up ready to go with all the tools already installed (third-party tools that don't come preinstalled that is).

[digip]

4 hours ago, Dave-ee Jones said:

I know how to make a VM, and I use VMware's Workstation Player. VirtualBox is a bit..limited..and buggy.

Your Linux USB - is that persistent? I wanna know how to make one of those - especially a Multiboot USB that can persist with multiple OS'. Would be neat, and I could customise the OS' images persistently so I can boot them up ready to go with all the tools already installed (third-party tools that don't come preinstalled that is).

If you want persistence on Kali, follow: https://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-persistence (Needs pre-installed Live USB of kali before adding persistence to it - which you can do here first - https://docs.kali.org/downloading/kali-linux-live-usb-install if not already added to one of your USB drives)

[barry99705]

On 6/30/2017 at 11:32 AM, PoSHMagiC0de said:

Yeah, i did that for Kali as far as setup a non-root user with sudo access and a shell but found myself having to run sudo still for a lot of non-root commands like ifconfig still.  Maybe was still missing something in my path or something but it wasn't jiving for me as an every day linux distro.  I know people will say it is not meant to be a everyday use distro but was working with it.  On my home machine I already use a completely separate drive to run Linux on that I physically have to plug in.  The other drive is Windows 10 of course.  Gotta have the games.  I just gave Parrot a whirl a few months back and never removed it since it has been working out so well.  I might be liking the MATE desktop too.  I have Kali on my Pi but thinking of giving the Parrot ARM architecture a try too to see what is up.  Only issue I have so far is Parrot is on Debian 9 so I cannot install Linux version of Powershell due to Powershell needing old libraries I just will not butcher my OS repo to do and for any .net core stuff I had to find a specific version to get it up an running but navigating the current .net core repo is a maze right now anyway so I expected that.

Parrot itself is actually made up of the Kali repo.  I didn't add Kali.  Parrot's repo is built partially from Kali I am guessing.  You can see it when you do upgrades as some of the packages have the kali name on them, plus they mention it on their site.  So I think of Parrot as a starter pentest OS being you are forced onto a non-root user (which is good for new users) but still have all the tools of Kali.  I like it because it feels more like a desktop OS with features.  :-)

 

That has been a root command for every linux distro I've used for the last 20 years.

[PoSHMagiC0de]

Just now, barry99705 said:

That has been a root command for every linux distro I've used for the last 20 years.

To make changes it is but to just get a list of adapters and their config usually do not need to run with sudo.

 

[PoSHMagiC0de]

14 hours ago, Dave-ee Jones said:

I know how to make a VM, and I use VMware's Workstation Player. VirtualBox is a bit..limited..and buggy.

Your Linux USB - is that persistent? I wanna know how to make one of those - especially a Multiboot USB that can persist with multiple OS'. Would be neat, and I could customise the OS' images persistently so I can boot them up ready to go with all the tools already installed (third-party tools that don't come preinstalled that is).

Nah, I wasn't showing you how to make a VM.  I was showing how to make a persistent USB, well my way and encrypting it too.  It will then function like a normal Linux OS with apt update and the works.  Do not know about making one of those multiboots persistent.

You might can do the same with VMWare though I haven't tried it yet.  It depends if you can boot the iso and the booted ISO can see the USB stick when you select what media you want to install the OS on.

Digip lists another way.  I do it the virtual machine way to do it in one step and just make the whole USB the OS in 1 run, including adding encryption.