Kali Linux 2023.2 system release: Xfce version supports PipeWire and upgrades i3 desktop
On June 5th, Offerive Security announced the launch of a new version of Kali Linux 2023.2 for the GNU/Linux distribution, bringing new features, updates, new tools, and many improvements.
Kali Linux 2023.2 was launched two and a half months after the 10th anniversary release of Kali Linux 2023.1, which introduced multimedia backend support for Kali Linux's flagship version of PipeWire, which features a lightweight Xfce desktop environment.
PipeWire replaces PulseAudio in the Xfce version, providing a better audio experience. The existing Kali Linux installations use the sudo apt update&&sudo apt full upgrade command to perform complete updates, and they will also receive PipeWire support.
The Xfce version of Kali Linux also adds the extension GtkHash to the Thunar file manager, which supports fast calculation of file checksums. On the other hand, the GNOME product has been updated to the latest GNOME 44 version and has added a new extension to Tiling Assistant to enhance the default tiling experience of GNOME desktops.
Kali Linux 2023.2 also comprehensively improved i3 products, including a tiled window manager with new lock screen, on/off menu, and two desktop variants, one with tiled windows and the other with floating windows.
Several new hacker tools have been added in this version, including Cilium cli for installing, managing, and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters, Cosign for container signing, Eksctl as the official CLI of Amazon EKS, and Evilginx as an independent intermediary - an intermediate attack framework for phishing login credentials and session cookies, which allows to bypass two factor authentication.
Other new tools include GoPhish, an open source phishing toolkit, Humble, a fast HTTP header analyzer for security, Slim, a tool to shrink container images, Syft, a tool to generate software bill of materials from containers, and Terraform, a tool to create, change, and improve infrastructure safely and predictably.
The new tool list in Kali Linux 2023.2 continues to include eBPF based security observability and runtime execution tool Tetragon; The Hive, an extensible, open source, and free security event response platform; WSGI based universal and scalable WebDAV server Wsgidav; Trivy, a tool for searching for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, secrets, and SBOM in containers, Kubernetes, code repositories, clouds, and more.
In addition, the Kali menu has received some updates and improvements, including the use of new Hyper-V VM images, the addition of additional firmware to all ARM images, and the overhaul of the Kali WSL rootfs build script.
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