Parrot Security OS 3.5
A modern day Robin Hood with a conscience, Shashank Sharma tests security measures while remaining anonymous. Until now…
A modern day Robin Hood with a conscience, Shashank Sharma merely tests security measures with this pentesting distro, while remaining anonymous. Erm…
Security assessment essentially means protecting your network infrastructure from unscrupulous individuals. Specialised distributions featuring a vast collection of popular tools to help you do just that have been around for quite some time, with many competing for dominance in the field of vulnerability assessment.
Parrot Security OS is one such Debian-based rolling release distribution. While that structure is identical to Kali Linux, arguably the most popular penetration distribution, Parrot Security has enough tricks up its sleeve to impress novice and experienced administrators alike. For one, unlike its myriad peers that are designed to be run as a Live medium, Parrot can be installed to disk and thus features a number of everyday productivity apps, and you can fetch and install more using the repositories.
All the specialised tools are housed in the Parrot menu, which is further split into neat categories with various subcategories where warranted. For instance, the Information Gather menu is further divided into SSL Analysis, DNS Analysis, etc, apart from multipurpose tools such as nmap which aren’t relegated to any sub-category. The Wireless Testing menu similarly offers submenus for 802.11 and Bluetooth tools, among others.
Designed in collaboration with Caine, Parrot features the best tools and suites in digital forensics featuring the best analysis, evidence management and reporting tools. With your security in mind, the distribution also ships with several cryptography and encryption tools to safeguard your data. It also boasts out of the box Tor support featuring torbrowser, torchat, Anonsurf and various other privacy tools to mask your online presence.
The latest release also ships with native VirtualBox and VMWare guest support, unlike its peers.
Teething troubles
For any Linux distribution, but especially one geared for specialist use, installation is a key challenge. Parrot users can choose to install to USB, with or without persistence, or to disk without being forced to first boot into the Live environment. What’s more, the Curses based standard installer is complemented by a GTK-driven one for users more at ease with a mouse. Which turned out to be a good thing as the distribution refused to launch the installer from within the Live environment without reporting error messages. Also, the installation failed during one of our tests when we chose to install /home and /tmp to separate partitions using encrypted LVM. Barring these two hiccups, the distribution worked flawlessly even on machines with unimpressive RAM.
One area where the distro lags behind pack leader Kali Linux is documentation, which is minimalist, albeit functional. Until early this year, the project didn’t even have a dedicated and independent forum board. The newly launched forum boards are fairly active but with only a handful of posts as of now, it’s not exactly a vast information resource.
Based on Debian, Parrot Security OS has often been unfairly compared with its more successful peer Kali Linux, despite being more similar to Caine. However, Parrot’s repository of tools, comparable to Kali, is complemented by an arsenal of cryptography software coupled with various anonymising tools to ensure your online presence is always masked should you so desire, and that communications are encrypted. As a result, Parrot Security OS establishes itself as a wise fit for pentesting purposes with enough privacy tools to make Snowden proud. That’s the author’s Robin Hood side rearing its head again.