Kali Linux has released its latest version, Kali Linux 2023.3. While it may not shout about flashy features, this release is all about power under the hood.
In this post, we’ll break down the changes in Kali Linux 2023.3 and guide you on upgrading.
Revamped Internal Infrastructure
The big news here is a major overhaul of Kali’s internal infrastructure. With Debian 12 in the house, the Kali team decided it was time for a refresh. This revamp brings solid benefits like better performance and stability. It means simplifying things, using Debian 12, Cloudflare for faster content delivery, Nginx as the web server, and Ansible for smoother infrastructure management.
Mirror Traces
For people running community mirrors of Kali, there’s a new sub-domain, mirror-traces.kali.org, that offers more detailed insights, making troubleshooting a breeze.
Enhanced Packaging Tools
Kali Linux 2023.3 beefs up its packaging tools. Various scripts and tools have been upgraded for more efficient package management. You get AutoPkgTest for package testing, Britney2 for moving packages between branches, Build-Logs to track package builds, Janitor for automated packaging, Package Tracker to follow version history, and more.
Kali Autopilot
Kali Autopilot, the automated attack framework introduced in Kali 2023.1, has had a major facelift. It now sports a slick new GUI and loads of new features. Originally created for defense testing, it lets you automate attack scenarios, a real gem for security testing.
New Tools
This release introduces nine new tools to Kali Linux, expanding the toolkit for security aficionados. Highlights include Calico for cloud-native network security, ImHex, a Hex Editor for reverse engineering, and Villain, a C2 framework for handling reverse shells.
How to Upgrade to Kali Linux 2023.3
$ echo "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade
$ cp -vrbi /etc/skel/. ~/
$ [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -f
You should now be on Kali Linux 2023.3 We can do a quick check by doing:
$ grep VERSION /etc/os-release
VERSION="2023.3"
VERSION_ID="2023.3"
VERSION_CODENAME="kali-rolling"
$ uname -v
#1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.3.7-1kali1 (2023-06-29)
$ uname -r
6.3.0-kali1-amd64