10 Best Penetration Testing Tools in 2023 (Pentesting Tools & Toolkit)

Big tech giants, such as Zoom, Microsoft, and Twitter, faced data breaches recently. Hence, it is crucial to test the security of a company’s network. Different types of hacking attaches and breaches target web applications, mobile apps, blockchain apps, and cloud apps. 

Therefore, you need a powerful tool that can ensure the security of all types of applications. Penetration testing, or pen testing, refers to when testers simulate cyber attacks to assess the overall security of an application. This method helps testers find the strength and resistance of an app to advanced attacks while identifying its loopholes and vulnerabilities that a hacker can exploit. 

Penetration testing can be manual or automated. The latter requires highly-skilled pen testers, which can be a bit expensive, while the latter uses automated testing tools that are cost and time efficient. 

But, which are the best tools for penetration testing? Let’s understand this here in detail

Although there are ample pentest tools available to help you identify and remove vulnerabilities, finding the right tool can be a tough row to hoe. Below is a list of penetration testing tools that are widely used in 2023:

1. Aircrack-ng

2. Metasploit

3. Wireshark

4. Kali Linux

5. Nmap

6. W3af

7. SQLmap

8. Nikto

9. Burp Suite

10. Nessus

Here are the top 10 pen testing tools, their features, and other important details you need to know.

1. Aircrack-ng

Aircrack-ng is considered among the best network software suites for cracking WPA-PSK and WEP Windows. It comprises a complete suite of tools for penetration testing to assess different aspects of WiFi network security. 

You can monitor the network, and the tools will enable you to packet capture and export data to text files. In addition, there are attack testing tools too, which include replay attacks, fake access points, authentication, and more. It also allows you to check the driver's capabilities, including injection and capture. 

Top Features:

• Offers multi-platform support, including NetBSD, Windows, OpenBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, eComStation, and FreeBSD.

• It is a wireless network testing tool that decrypts WEP ad WPA PSK passwords, which shows a vital area of weakness.

• It was initially designed to function on Linux OS but was later updated to be compatible with Windows and other operating systems.

• It can carry out replay attacks, introduce packets to the network, and set up fake access points. 

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: WiFi network security

• Platform: Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD

• Manual pentest: No

• Vulnerability management: No

• Compliance: No

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price: Open-source

2. Metasploit

Metasploit is a widely-known and advanced framework that has made its place among the top penetration test tools. Ethical hackers and cybersecurity professionals commonly use this ruby-based tool, and it helps simulate any pen testing you require. The tool identifies the weaknesses in a system and exploits them further. Therefore, you can isolate and demonstrate the flaws quickie and fix issues. 

Top Features:

• It can be used to customize and develop security tools or write code to find undetected vulnerabilities.

• Compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.

• Preferred for executing a large network pen testing.

• Protects organizations and small businesses from cyberattacks.

• Users can scan weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the computer network by running discovery scans. They can also scan imported data.

• Has a command line and GUI interface.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: N/A

• Platform: Linux, MacOS, and Windows computers that have a minimum of 4GB RAM and 1GB storage.

• Manual pentest: Metasploit contains an assortment of tools that can be used for pentesting

• Vulnerability management: No

• Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting 

• Accuracy: N/A

• Price: Free

3. Wireshark

Wireshark allows you to test web applications using a pentester toolkit that can inspect hundreds of different protocols meticulously. One of the key reasons that it is listed among the top pen testing tools is that it can be integrated with a network packet sniffer. Due to this, it can deeply inspect hundreds of protocols. 

The team of Wireshark is constantly updating it and adding more features. Moreover, it is easy to use, allowing you to compress, decompress, and export data seamlessly. It also has a built-in network protocol debugging environment. 

Top Features:

• It uses a packet sniffing and capture API to gather data packets. On Linux, it is known as libpcap, which stands for Promiscuous Library Capture.

• It runs on several platforms, including FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD, and more.

• Provides comprehensive reports of the tests carried out on a network. The reports are in a format that any operator can easily understand.

Captures voice over internet protocol data packets or calls that are made across the network, which allows the user access to the data.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Captures live packet data from a network interface

• Platform: Unix, Windows. It needs libraries like Qt, GLib, & libpcap to run 

• Manual pentest: Useful tool for pentesting

• Vulnerability management: No

• Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting 

• Accuracy: Fairly accurate

• Price: Free

4. Kali Linux

Kali Linux is a Debian-based platform that offers multi-language support, supports complete customization of Kali ISO, and has more than 600 penetration testing tools within. It offers a range of penetration testing tools that you can use based on your requirements. 

Moreover, Kali Linux has a trustworthy operating system that comes with several accessibility features. It supports different single-board systems, such as Raspberry Pi. This platform has the latest patches and can work with any number of wireless devices. 

Moreover, its forensic mode allows us to disable features that can change data in the analyzed system. 

Top Features:

• Offers well-documented information for experts and beginners in the field, which include tips and pointers.

• Consists of several tools and utilities.

• You can easily create a customized and optimized program version specific to your requirements.

• Comes with over 600 pen testing tools.

• You don’t have to store it on the computer system as it can be used directly from a USB storage device.

• Offers multi-language support.

• The Kali NetHunter feature allows Android phones to have a penetration testing app. 

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications, networks, APIs

• Platform: Linux

• Manual pentest: No

• Vulnerability management: No

• Compliance: No

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price: Open-source

5. Nmap

Nmap is an acronym for Network Mapper. It is a pentesters toolkit that helps you map a network by scanning ports, identifying and discovering operating systems, and creating an inventory of devices and services running on them. 

This pen testing tool sends differently structured packets for various transport layer protocols that return with IP addresses and other details. This information can be used to host discovery, fingerprints, OS, security auditing, and service discovery. 

Top Features:

• Completely open-source tool.

• Offers the ability to configure the IPs, protocols, and port ranges of the network. You can change these as per your preferences, and the tool can scan various IP networks for open ports.

• It can map an extensive network that has thousands of ports connected to it.

• Supports Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

• You can check the vulnerabilities within your application and perform penetration testing on the web application to a full extent. 

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Scans the 1000 most popular ports of each network protocol

• Platform: Linux, Windows, MacOS

• Manual Pentest: Used for network mapping and port scanning, which are a part of the manual testing effort.

• Vulnerability management: No

• Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting 

• Accuracy: Occasionally shows false positives and faulty insights.

• Price: Free

6. W3af

W3af is another tool that can be used in a manual and automated way through the API in the Python language. It is a web application attack and audit framework that is best suited for web application pen testing and auditing. 

It is extensible with modules designed in a way so that it is easy to configure and extend. One reason that makes it one of the best pen tester tools is that it can find almost 200 different web app flaws. 

Top Features:

• It comes with multiple plugins to carry out different functions and can communicate with each other. Some of the plugins are exploit, audit, and discovery.

• Proxy support and cookie handling.

• It has two interfaces, the command line interface, and the graphical user interface.

• It has a manual request generation feature that acts like a man-in-the-middle proxy to enable web app testing.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications

• Platform: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD

• Manual Pentest: No

• Vulnerability Management: No

• Compliance: No

• Accuracy: False positives possibles

• Price: Free

7. SQLmap

SQLmap is a freely available pentest tool that automates the process of identifying threats and attacks associated with SQL injections. It comes with a powerful testing engine, multiple injection attacks, and support for various servers, such as Microsoft Access, MySQL, SQLite, and IBM DB2. 

Top Features:

• Highly compatible with most environments.

• It helps execute arbitrary instructions remotely and access the output if the database system is Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, etc.

• Supports SAP MaxDB, Firebird, Sybase, PostgreSQL, SQL editor for Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft Access, etc.

• It can be used as a password-cracking tool as it recognizes password hash formats automatically and uses a dictionary-based attack method.

• Supports six SQL injection techniques- stacked queries, time-based blind, UNION query-based, boolean-based blind, error-based, and out-of-band.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications

• Platform: Windows, Linux

• Manual Pentest: No

• Vulnerability Management: No 

• Compliance: No

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price: Free

8. Nikto

Nikto is among the best tools for pen testing that is capable of conducting detailed tests on web servers. This open-source testing tool can identify almost 7000 malicious files and applications, including more than 6700 potentially dangerous programs or files. 

In addition, it can check for outdated server versions and version-specific issues on more than 270 server versions, such as FTP, Netscape, Lotus, Apache, MyDoom, MySQL, iPlanet, ProFTPs, BIND, Courier, etc. 

Top Features:

• An open-source scanner that tests web applications to find potential threats. 

• Has full HTTP support.

• It is free and easy to set up.

• It’s a Perl-based program that is compatible with various operating systems with the necessary Perl interpreter installed.

• It can scan different server ports.

• There are various customized reports available based on templates.

• Can detect outdated versions of 1250 servers and fix the issue within the servers. 

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications, servers

• Platform: Linux

• Manual Pentest: No

• Vulnerability Management: No 

• Compliance: No

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price: Free

9. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a popular and comprehensive penetration testing toolkit used by pen testers, ethical hackers, and security engineers. It is essentially a scanner with limited intruder tools for attacks, but many security testing specialists claim that pen testing without Burp Suite is unimaginable. Although it’s not free, it’s effective and worth the cost. 

Top Features:

• The tool generates detailed reports that are easy to understand. Thus, you can recognize possible weaknesses during security testing.

• Its scanner has broad coverage that is structured to test modern web apps with different APIs and compare them with documented vulnerabilities.

• Burp Suite has three versions that are compatible with macOS, Linux, and Windows.

• It can identify and decode encryption used for transferring data packets across a network. After that, it encodes similar data in the network.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications

• Platform: Windows, macOS

• Manual Pentest: Yes

• Vulnerability Management: No

• Compliance:  PCI-DSS, OWASP Top 10, HIPAA, GDPR

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price:  $449/per user/per year

10. Nessus

Nessus is used to simplify vulnerability assessments and enhance remediation efficiency. This tool helps you extend the security assessment from traditional IT assets to cloud infrastructure. 

Moreover, it keeps the zero false positives low and covers a range of vulnerabilities. Among the top-rated pen-testing tools, Nessus is the one that can test systems for 65k vulnerabilities and enables vulnerability assessment. 

Top Features:

• It integrates with other Tenable products seamlessly.

• Allows you to test your systems for more than 47k vulnerabilities.

• Offers customizable reporting and troubleshooting.

• Easy to use 

• It can be deployed easily on different platforms, including Raspberry Pi.

• Offers a free trial.

• It contains extra plugins that protect you from new threats.

• Fully portable.

Other Details:

• Scanner Capacity: Web applications

• Platform: Windows, macOS

• Manual Pentest: No

• Vulnerability Management: Yes (Additional Cost)

• Compliance: HIPAA, ISO, NIST, PCI-DSS

• Accuracy: False positives possible

• Price: $5,880.20/ year