Downloading Kali Linux

IMPORTANT! Never download Kali Linux images from anywhere other than the official
sources.

Always be sure to verify the SHA256 checksums of the file you’ve downloaded against
our official values.

It would be easy for a malicious entity to modify a Kali installation to contain exploits or
malware and host it unofficially.

Where to Get Official Kali Linux Images

ISO Files for Intel-based PCs

In order to run Kali “Live” from a USB drive on standard Windows and Apple PCs, you’ll
need a Kali Linux bootable ISO image, in either 32-bit or 64-bit format.

If you’re not sure of the architecture of the system you want to run Kali on, on Linux or
macOS, you can run the command uname -m at the command line. If you get the
response, “x86_64”, use the 64-bit ISO image (the one containing “amd64” in the file
name); if you get “i386”, use the 32-bit image (the one containing “i386” in the file name).
If you’re on a Windows system, the procedure for determining whether your architecture
is detailed on Microsoft’s website.

The Kali Linux images are available both as directly downloadable “.iso/.img” files or via
“.torrent” files.

​ Official Kali ISOs for Intel-based PCs

Building your own Kali Linux ISO, standard or customized, is a very simple process.

Virtual Machines Images

If you want to run Kali Linux as a “guest” under VMware or VirtualBox, Kali Linux is
available as a pre-built virtual machines with any guest tools already installed. These
image are available in a 64-bit (amd64), and 32-bit PAE (i*86) formats.

​ Official Kali Linux VMware Images

ARM Images

The hardware architectures of ARM-based devices vary considerably, so it is not

possible to have a single image that will work across all of them. Pre-built Kali Linux
images for the ARM architecture are available for a wide range of devices.

Scripts for building your own ARM images locally are also available on GitLab. For more
details, see the articles on setting up an ARM cross-compilation environment and
building a custom Kali Linux ARM chroot.

Verifying Your Downloaded Kali Image

Why do I need to do this?

Before you run Kali Linux Live, or install it to your hard disk, you want to be very sure
that what you’ve got actually is Kali Linux, and not an imposter. Kali Linux is a
professional penetration testing and forensics toolkit. As a professional penetration
tester, having absolute confidence in the integrity of your tools is critical: if your tools are
not trustworthy, your investigations will not be trustworthy, either.

Moreover, as the leading penetration testing distribution, Kali’s strengths mean that a
bogus version of Kali Linux could do a tremendous amount of damage if it were
deployed unwittingly. There are plenty of people with plenty of reason to want to stick
very sketchy stuff into something that looks like Kali, and you absolutely do not want to
find yourself running something like that.

Avoiding this is simple:

​ Only download Kali Linux via the official download pages at kali.org/downloads/
or offensive-security.com/kali-linux-vmware-arm-image-download/ - you will not
be able to browse to these pages without SSL; encrypting the connection makes
it much harder for an attacker to use a “man-in-the-middle” attack to modify your
download. There are a few potential weaknesses to even these sources - see the
sections on verifying the download with the SHA256SUMS file and its signature
against the official Kali Development team private key for something much closer
to absolute assurance.
 ​ Once you’ve downloaded an image, and before you run it, always validate that it
really is what it’s supposed to be by verifying its checksum using one of the
procedures detailed below.

There are several methods for verifying your download. Each provides a certain level of
assurance, and involves a corresponding level of effort on your part.

​ You can download an ISO image from an official Kali Linux “Downloads” mirror,
calculate the ISO’s SHA256 hash and compare it by inspection with the value
listed on the Kali Linux site. This is quick and easy, but potentially susceptible to
subversion via a DNS poisoning: it assumes that the site to which, for example,
the domain “kali.org” resolves is in fact the actual Kali Linux site. If it somehow
were not, an attacker could present a “loaded” image and a matching SHA256
signature on the fake web page. See the section “Manually Verify the Signature
on the ISO (Direct Download)”, below.
​ You can download an ISO image through the torrents, and it will also pull down a
file - unsigned - containing the calculated SHA256 signature. You can then use
the shasum command (on Linux and macOS) or a utility (on Windows) to
automatically verify that the file’s computed signature matches the signature in
the secondary file. This is even easier than the “manual” method, but suffers from
the same weakness: if the torrent you pulled down is not really Kali Linux, it could
still have a good signature. See the section “Verify the Signature on the ISO
Using the Included Signature File (Torrent Download)”, below.
​ To be as close to absolutely certain as possible that the Kali Linux download
you’ve obtained is the real thing, you can download both a cleartext signature file
and and version of the same file that has been signed with the official Kali Linux
private key and use GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) to first, verify that the computed
SHA256 signature and the signature in the cleartext file match and second, verify
that the signed version of the file containing the SHA256 hash has been correctly
signed with the official key.

If you use this more complicated process and successfully validate your downloaded
ISO, you can proceed with pretty complete assurance that what you’ve got is the official
image and that it has not been tampered with in any way. This method, while the most
complex, has the advantage of providing independent assurance of the integrity of the
image. The only way this method can fail is if the official Kali Linux private key is not only
subverted by an attacker, but also not subsequently revoked by the Kali Linux
development team. For this method, see the section on verification using the
SHA256SUMS file.

What do I need to do this?

If you’re running on Linux, you probably already have GPG (GNU Privacy Guard)
installed. If you’re on Windows or macOS, you’ll need to install the appropriate version
for your platform.

​ If you’re on a PC running Windows, download and install GPG4Win from here.

Certain versions of Windows do not have the native ability to calculate SHA256
checksums. To check this, you can open the command prompt and run certutil -?.
If you do have this installed, you can run certutil -hashfile
kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso sha256 to verify your download. If you do not
have certutil installed, you will also need a utility such as Microsoft File
Checksum Integrity Verifier or Hashtab to verify your download.
​ If you’re on a Macintosh running macOS, download and install GPGTools from
here. Alternatively, if you have Homebrew installed, just run brew install gnupg

Once you’ve installed GPG, you’ll need to download and import a copy of the Kali Linux
official key. Do this with the following command:

$ wget -q -O - https://archive.kali.org/archive-key.asc | gpg --import

or the command

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key

44C6513A8E4FB3D30875F758ED444FF07D8D0BF6

Your output should look like this:

gpg: key ED444FF07D8D0BF6: public key "Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>"

imported

gpg: Total number processed: 1

gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

Verify that the key is properly installed with the command:

$ gpg --fingerprint 44C6513A8E4FB3D30875F758ED444FF07D8D0BF6

The output will look like this:

pub rsa4096 2012-03-05 [SC] [expires: 2023-01-16]

44C6 513A 8E4F B3D3 0875 F758 ED44 4FF0 7D8D 0BF6

uid [ full] Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>

sub rsa4096 2012-03-05 [E] [expires: 2023-01-16]

You’re now set up to validate your Kali Linux download.

How Do I Verify My Downloaded Image?

Manually Verify the Signature on the ISO (Direct Download)

If you downloaded the ISO directly from the downloads page, verify it using the following
procedure.

On Linux, or macOS, you can generate the SHA256 checksum from the ISO image
you’ve downloaded with the following command (assuming that the ISO image is named
“kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso”, and is in your current directory):

$ shasum -a 256 kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso

The output should look like this:

a6e11071179f5c3a8c5195123b505f0d991a5c845d22bcba0f4355be69c6d9e8
kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso

The resulting SHA256 signature,

“a6e11071179f5c3a8c5195123b505f0d991a5c845d22bcba0f4355be69c6d9e8”, can be
seen to match the signature displayed in the “sha256sum” column on the official
download page for the 64-bit Intel architecture Kali Linux 2021.2 ISO image:
Verify the Signature on the ISO Using the Included Signature File
(Torrent Download)

If you downloaded your copy of the Kali Linux ISO image via the torrents, in addition to
the ISO file (e.g. kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso), there will be a second file containing
the computed SHA256 signature for the ISO, with the extension “.txt.sha256sum” (e.g.
kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.txt.sha256sum). You can use this file to verify the
authenticity of your download on Linux or macOS with the following command:

$ grep kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.txt.sha256sum |

shasum -a 256 -c

If the image is successfully authenticated, the response will look like this:

kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso: OK

IMPORTANT! If you are unable to verify the authenticity of the Kali Linux image you
have downloaded as described in the preceding section, do NOT use it! Using it could
endanger not only your own system, but any network you connect to as well as the other
systems on that network. Stop, and ensure that you have downloaded the images from a
legitimate Kali Linux mirror.

Verify the ISO Using the SHA256SUMS File

This is a more complex procedure, but offers a much higher level of validation: it does
not rely on the integrity of the web site you downloaded the image from, only the official
Kali Linux development team key that you install independently. To verify your image this
way for an Intel architecture version of Kali, you will need to download three files from
the Kali “Live CD Image” site for the current release (v2021.2, as of this writing):

​ The ISO image itself (e.g. kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso)

​ The file containing the calculated SHA256 hash for the ISO, SHA256SUMS
​ The signed version of that file, SHA256SUMS.gpg

Before verifying the checksums of the image, you must ensure that the SHA256SUMS
file is the one generated by Kali Linux. That’s why the file is signed by Kali’s official key
with a detached signature in SHA256SUMS.gpg. If you have not already done so, Kali’s
official key can be downloaded and imported into your keychain with this command:

$ wget -q -O - https://archive.kali.org/archive-key.asc | gpg --import

or this command

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key

44C6513A8E4FB3D30875F758ED444FF07D8D0BF6

Your output should look like this:

gpg: key ED444FF07D8D0BF6: public key "Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>"

imported

gpg: Total number processed: 1

gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

You should verify that the key is properly installed with the command:
$ gpg --fingerprint 44C6513A8E4FB3D30875F758ED444FF07D8D0BF6

The output will look like this:

pub rsa4096 2012-03-05 [SC] [expires: 2023-01-16]

44C6 513A 8E4F B3D3 0875 F758 ED44 4FF0 7D8D 0BF6

uid [ full] Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>

sub rsa4096 2012-03-05 [E] [expires: 2023-01-16]

Once you have downloaded both SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.gpg, you can verify
the signature as follows:

$ gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.gpg SHA256SUMS

gpg: Signature made Mon Sep 2 06:42:05 2019 EDT

gpg: using RSA key 44C6513A8E4FB3D30875F758ED444FF07D8D0BF6

gpg: Good signature from "Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>" [full]

If you do not get that “Good signature” message or if the key ID does not match, then
you should stop and review whether you downloaded the images from a legitimate Kali
Linux mirror. The failed verification strongly suggests that the image you have may have
been tampered with.

If you did get the “Good signature” response, you can now be assured that the
checksum in the SHA256SUMS file was actually provided by the Kali Linux development
team. All that remains to be done to complete the verification is to validate that the
signature you compute from the ISO you’ve downloaded matches the one in the
SHA256SUMS file. You can do that on Linux or macOS with the following command
(assuming that the ISO is named “kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso” and is in your
working directory):

$ grep kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso SHA256SUMS | shasum -a 256 -c

If the image is successfully authenticated, the response will look like this:

kali-linux-2021.2-live-amd64.iso: OK

If you do not get “OK” in response, then stop and review what’s happened: the Kali
image you have has apparently been tampered with. Do NOT use it.

Once you’ve downloaded and verified your image, you can proceed to create a bootable
“Kali Linux Live” USB drive.