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Kali Linux for Windows Users

Kali Linux is now available as an official application in the Microsoft App Store for Windows 10. This allows users to install and run Kali Linux within Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with just one click. While there are some limitations compared to running Kali natively, it significantly expands the security toolkit available to penetration testers and others constrained by enterprise compliance standards. The Kali team worked closely with Microsoft to make this possible in WSL and hopes users will enjoy having Kali Linux on Windows 10.

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173 views3 pages

Kali Linux for Windows Users

Kali Linux is now available as an official application in the Microsoft App Store for Windows 10. This allows users to install and run Kali Linux within Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with just one click. While there are some limitations compared to running Kali natively, it significantly expands the security toolkit available to penetration testers and others constrained by enterprise compliance standards. The Kali team worked closely with Microsoft to make this possible in WSL and hopes users will enjoy having Kali Linux on Windows 10.

Uploaded by

D4mmy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Kali Linux in the Windows App Store

March 5, 2018mutsKali Linux News, Kali Linux Tutorials

No, really…this isn’t clickbait. For the past few weeks, we’ve been working with the Microsoft
WSL team to get Kali Linux introduced into the Microsoft App Store as an official WSL
distribution and today we’re happy to announce the availability of the “Kali Linux” Windows
application. For Windows 10 users, this means you can simply enable WSL, search for Kali in
the Windows store, and install it with a single click. This is especially exciting news for
penetration testers and security professionals who have limited toolsets due to enterprise
compliance standards.

While running Kali on Windows has a few drawbacks to running it natively (such as the lack of
raw socket support), it does bring in some very interesting possibilities, such as extending your
security toolkit to include a whole bunch of command line tools that are present in Kali. We will
update our blog with more news and updates regarding the development of this app as it’s
released.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the WSL team at Microsoft, and
specifically @tara_msft and @benhillis for all the assistance and guidance with which this feat
would not be possible. We hope you enjoy WSL’d Kali on Windows 10!

And now, a quick guide on getting Kali installed from the Microsoft App Store:

Getting Kali Linux Installed on WSL


Here’s a quick description of the setup and installation process. For an easier copy / paste
operation, these are the basic steps taken:
1. Update your Windows 10 machine. Open an administrative PowerShell window and install the
Windows Subsystem with this one-liner. A reboot will be required once finished.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-
Subsystem-Linux

2. Once rebooted, open the Windows App store and search for the “Kali Linux” application, or
alternatively click here to go there directly. Install the app and enjoy Kali!

Updating Kali Linux on WSL


Updating Kali Linux on WSL is no different from any other instance of Kali:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Here’s a quick video of the process:

Installing Penetration Testing tools on Kali


Installing tools from the Kali Linux repository is usually done via apt commands. For example,
to install the Metasploit Framework, you can simply:

apt-get update
apt-get install metasploit-framework

Note: Some Kali tools are identified by antivirus software as malware. One way to deal with this
situation is to allow antivirus exceptions on the directory in which the Kali chroot resides in. The
following video walks you through this process:

Recovering from a failed Kali WSL instance


Sometimes, you can inadvertently kill your Kali WSL instance, due to an overzealous command,
an unintentional action, or even due to Kali or WSL bugs. If this happens, here is a quick
recovery guide to get back on top of things. Note: this process will wipe your Kali WSL chroot,
and re-extract a new copy. Any changes made to the filesystem will be gone, and reset to default.

Food for thought


The availability of the Kali Linux platform and toolset on Windows 10 brings with it many
exciting possibilities which we havent even begun to grasp – here’s one example that got us
scratching our heads. While not officially supported by WSL yet, we’ve tested running a desktop
manager such as XFCE on WSL’d Kali…and it seems to work quite well:

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