Welcome back, aspiring cyberwarriors!

Think back to the first time you installed Kali Linux. It was probably one of those moments where you realized just how many cybersecurity tools existed. Your applications menu was packed with hundreds of tools covering everything from recon and vulnerability scanning to exploitation, password attacks, wireless security and much more.

At first, it was exciting. But most beginners spend hours clicking through the menus wondering what every tool does and when they should actually use it. Unfortunately, the sheer number of applications quickly becomes overwhelming. Even if you dedicate time to learning them, chances are you’ll forget many of their names simply because there are so many available. On top of that, documentation isn’t always beginner-friendly. Some projects have excellent documentation, while others assume you already know exactly what the tool is supposed to do before you even start reading.

The good news is that you don’t have to memorize hundreds of commands or remember every tool available. Instead, you can build your own arsenal of references that helps you quickly find the right tool.

In this article, we’re going to build exactly that. We’ll explore two resources called Arsenal-NG and Arsenal, both of which are designed to make finding offensive security tools, payloads, commands much faster.

Arsenal-NG

The first tool we’ll look at is Arsenal-NG. The name pretty much explains what it does. Arsenal-NG is essentially a searchable collection of offensive security tools, commands, and predefined workflows. Whether you’re doing reconnaissance, exploiting a service, generating payloads, Arsenal-NG can help you find the right tool for the job.

Let’s install it.

kali > git clone https://github.com/halilkirazkaya/arsenal-ng.git
kali > cd arsenal-ng
kali > make build

Once compilation finishes, you can launch the program directly. For convenience, you may also want to move the binary into one of the directories listed in your PATH environment variable. Doing so allows you to start Arsenal-NG from any directory. 

kali > arsenal-ng

When it starts, you’ll immediately notice a large collection of tools organized inside the interface. Each tool includes predefined presets for different kinds of operations. 

To display the complete list of available tools, simply run tools

If you already know what kind of task you’re trying to accomplish but don’t remember what tool can do it, you can use the built-in search feature. Searching by keywords makes it easy to discover them.

Once you’ve found the tool you need, selecting one of its presets walks you through the required parameters. There you simply provide the requested information and let it generate the command for you.

If you need additional information about the application itself, run help.

Arsenal

Unlike Arsenal-NG, Arsenal focuses primarily on web exploitation and can be used directly from your browser. There is no installation process, making it convenient when you simply need a quick reference.

You can access it here.

One thing worth mentioning is that the website supports multiple languages. If the interface isn’t already in English, simply switch the language using the selector in the upper-right corner. Once inside, you’ll notice that the content is organized into several different sections, each designed to help with a different phase of a web penetration test.

One of them is Payloads.

This area contains a huge collection of payloads covering many different types of web vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques. Whether you’re working with command injection, SQL injection, XSS, SSTI, XXE, deserialization, or other common web vulnerabilities, chances are you’ll find useful examples here.

Another valuable section is Attack Chains.

Rather than simply providing payloads, Attack Chains guide you through the overall exploitation process. They outline the sequence of steps typically required to compromise a target.

The Commands section is another good reference.

You can build the command you need by selecting the appropriate options.

Then we have Wordlists.

There are numerous wordlists organized into logical categories, making it much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. Each category often contains several different wordlists optimized for different situations. 

You’ll also find a large collection of Scripts.

These scripts cover a wide variety of purposes, including reconnaissance, AI-related security checks, subdomain takeovers, automation and more.

Of course, we’ve only scratched the surface. Arsenal contains more additional sections that are worth exploring on your own. Spend some time clicking through the different categories and seeing what they have.

Summary

Building your own cybersecurity arsenal isn’t about memorizing every command ever written. In fact, no experienced pentester or hacker remembers every tool, every option or every payload. There are simply too many of them, and new ones are being developed all the time. Arsenal-NG and Arsenal can help you organize knowledge. They are valuable when you’re getting started and they remain just as useful years later when you’re experienced.

Since many of these tools fall into different categories, such as network pentesting, web pentesting, bug bounty hunting, and more, the best way to develop your skills is through our Member Gold subscription. It gives you access to a wide variety of training courses covering different areas.

The post Linux for Hackers: Building Your Tool Arsenal first appeared on Hackers Arise.

Unsurprisingly to many of us, app stores for smart televisions are also trash. Perhaps even more full of trash than other app stores due to the smaller ecosystem and fewer reviewers.

Spur analyzed the LG smart TV app store, and found that almost half of the apps available contain proxy software, turning your TV into a node in their proxy network. Are these apps malware? Many of the analyzed apps provided a thin veneer of user consent: they offer you the tradeoff of seeing an ad every 15 seconds, or allowing their “occasional web indexing” to run permanently in the background. Watch the fishtank app for five minutes, join their proxy network for life.

Spur notes that the proxy SDK in use appears to block connections to private network ranges (internal IP ranges like 192.168.x.x and 10.x.x.x), but that the SDK restricting access to those ranges is the only protection against accessing whatever network the TV is connected to.

Amazon and Roku ban proxy apps on their devices. Samsung and LG do not.

Win 10 Security Updates Extended

Microsoft has added another year of security updates to Windows 10. Despite trying to kill the platform, so many users remain on Windows 10 that Microsoft likely has no choice.

The extended support program was previously due to end in October 2026 but has now been pushed to October 2027. The security updates will be available for free in the UI, but users in other regions must activate OneDrive and sync system settings, or pay 1000 Microsoft credits (about $30).

The death of Windows 10 is near, but for those unwilling or unable to let go, it shuffles along.

Signal Phishing Attempts

Bleeping Computer has an article about increased phishing attempts from hacker groups in Russia targeting Signal users.

The phishing messages target politicians, government officials, military, and other high-profile intelligence targets, and claim that Signal is introducing mandatory two-factor authentication, before prompting the target to enable remote Signal backups. A second follow-up phishing attempt then prompts the user to copy the backup authentication tokens from Signal and provide them to the attacker.

Signal remote backups are a relatively recent addition to the messenger, making a backup on the Signal servers of a users messages and images, encrypted with a key known only to the user. While convenient, and likely fundamentally secure given the track record of the Signal team, this phishing campaign highlights a major weakness: once private content is accessible somewhere else, an attacker simply needs to obtain the keys to access it, which is significantly simpler than obtaining the message content directly from the victims phone.

Payloads in WiFi and LoRa

Sasha Romijn presented an excellent talk at OrangeCon on embedding attack payloads in unusual places.

Sasha found poor input handling of content from DNS servers, TLS certificates, server headers, DHCP host names, LoRa Mesh node names, WiFi network names, and more. In many cases, it seems to be as simple as embedding JavaScript or CSS inside a string; many sites and utilities don’t sanitize against escaped HTML, and the standards allow it.

They then go on to demonstrate more serious impacts, such as compromising the management accounts of two Europe-based hosting providers by injecting content into TLS certificates, and gaining root on some OpenWRT devices via a WiFi SSID which loads a hostile JavaScript into the LUCI web management interface, which then uses the web management system to install a backdoor root shell.

Sasha continues the tour-de-exploits by demonstrating multiple cross-site scripting injections into the Ripe NCC database which then allow browser manipulation of users on the RIPE website. This has enormous implications, because Ripe NCC is the Internet allocation organization for Europe and the Middle East: the company who assigns and manages IP address blocks.

Be sure to check out the full presentation, and let this be a lesson to always treat all data as hostile, even from what would seem to be your own services!

Collecting Boot Console Info

One of the first steps in getting access to an embedded device is to look for a serial port, or serial port test points. Often this can give an idea what sort of code is running on the system, and in some cases, give direct access via the boot loader or a Linux login console.

Boot Intel is a web-based tool to automate scraping boot messages from embedded devices, looking for exposed logins and vulnerable services. Boot Intel can take pasted boot logs, or directly connect to the device via WebSerial.

While Boot Intel is a paid service, there is a free version for hackers to explore devices.

CitrixBleed, again

watchTowr Labs is back with another excellent write-up on CitrixBleed, continuing the trend of memory leaks in Citrix Netscaler devices.

This collection of vulnerabilities allow leaking internal memory from the Citrix servers, which can expose logs, customer data, encryption keys, or anything else found in server memory. Netscaler devices offer SSL offloading, application acceleration, VPN and remote access, and load balancing; all installations where leaking memory is likely very bad.

The watchTower write-up maintains their trend of providing entertaining reads about highly technical topics.  Do yourself a favor and be sure to give it a look!

Bits and Bytes

LastPass marketing partner Klue was compromised this week, impacting the customer data of multiple companies. Customer data such as email, phone numbers, addresses, and support tickets were exposed, however the LastPass vaults themselves were not impacted. While LastPass has revoked access to the impacted partner, the stolen data could assist phishing attacks against customers.

The open source self-hosted video sharing platform PeerTube has released an emergency update which addresses multiple vulnerabilities. While the release notes quote “medium to high severity” vulnerabilities, there are no specific details. If you run a PeerTube server, upgrade now!

Both Apple AirDrop and Google Quick Share have new vulnerabilities reported this week, with fixes coming soon. Both protocols are designed to allow file sharing to nearby devices, and accordingly, the issues found on them can be triggered on nearby devices. Researchers were able to find six vulnerabilities in macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android implementations of the sharing protocols. All of the discovered vulnerabilities led to crashes, but not full exploit and code execution. Sustained denial of service attacks were possible however, with nearby attackers able to keep the services unreachable and unusable for the duration.