The Kali Linux 2022.4 Ethical Hacking Distro includes Linux 6.0 and supports PinePhone

Published on Dec 07, 2022

Kali Linux 2022.4, the latest stable update to this Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution for ethical hackers and penetration testers, was released by Offensive Security today.

The Kali Linux 2022.4 release comes almost four months after Kali Linux 2022.3 and is the first in the Kali Linux 2022 series to include support for Linux 6.0 kernels. As a result, Kali Linux should now be able to run on and support a wider range of hardware if you use the latest ISO images.

This release of Kali Linux also includes support for the latest GNOME 43 and KDE Plasma 5.26 desktop environments. Kali Linux 2022.4 sticks with the lightweight Xfce desktop environment as its default graphical environment for its live ISOs.

Additionally, this new Kali Linux version includes official support for Pine64’s PinePhone and PinePhone Pro smartphones due to the introduction of Kali NetHunter Pro, a bare metal version of Kali Linux optimized for mobile devices and powered by the GNOME-based Phosh desktop environment.

The new release of Kali Linux includes several new tools for ethical hacking and penetration testing, such as bloodhound.py Python-based ingestor for BloodHound, certipy tool for enumerating and abusing Active Directory Certificate Services, hak5-wifi-coconut driver for USB Wi-Fi NICs and Hak5 Wi-Fi Coconut, ldapdomaindump Active Directory information dumper via LDAP, peass-ng privilege escalation tools, and rizin-cutter reverse engineering software.

Among other notable changes, Kali Linux 2022.4 provides a pre-generated image of QEMU for users using self-hosted Proxmox Virtual Environments (VE), virt-manager, or libvirt, improved ARM support with fixes for USB armory Mk II, ODROID-C2, and Radxa Zero devices, and internal Bluetooth support for Kali NetHunter users.

Kali Linux 2022.4 is available for download from the official website right now. It is primarily for those who wish to deploy Kali Linux on new machines or reinstall Kali Linux. Users of Kali Linux need only run sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade to update their installations.