Top 15 Penetration Testing Tools You Should Know in 2025

In this post, I’m going to list 18 of the most effective tools used in real-world penetration testing operations — from large-scale automation to advanced post-exploitation frameworks. 15 of them are open-source, while 3 are paid tools that still dominate in enterprise environments.

While tools change and evolve over time, methodologies are timeless. A tool may get outdated, but the logic behind identifying vulnerabilities — enumeration, exploitation, persistence — remains the same. This is why understanding how to think, not just what to run, is the key skill of a successful ethical hacker.

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Tools Don’t Hack — Hackers Do

I need to be clear about one thing:

Tools alone won’t find you vulnerabilities.

They are meant to enhance your capabilities, not replace your critical thinking. Automation helps scale your efforts and reduce repetitive work, but it can never replace manual testing when it comes to identifying deep or contextual bugs — things like:

• Broken Access Control
• Business Logic Flaws
• IDORs
• Chainable vulnerabilities (multi-step exploit chains)
• Non-obvious attack surfaces

Automation vs. Manual Testing

Automation Tools	Manual Testing
Fast & scalable	Slow but precise
Good for recon, mass scanning, fuzzing	Great for logic bugs, custom app behavior
Can find low-hanging fruits quickly	Finds high-impact, hidden vulnerabilities
Relies on rules & signatures	Relies on human creativity

A good pentester uses both. You automate the boring parts so you can focus on the interesting stuff.

TL;DR:

• Don’t rely blindly on automation.
• Learn to chain vulnerabilities.
• Master the mindset before the tools.
• Know when to go manual.

We’ll start with the 3 paid tools that are widely adopted in corporate environments and often required in compliance-driven pentest workflows.

Each of these tools has a specific strength — whether it''s for automation, scanning, exploitation, or post-exploitation.

And one more thing: Automation is great for coverage, but it can never replace the power of manual testing — where logic, creativity, and hacker intuition come into play.

Let’s dive in.

🥇Aikido Security (Paid)

Aikido Security is a powerful, developer-friendly application security platform that brings together multiple scanning technologies in one seamless workflow. It’s especially well-suited for organizations looking for a low-noise, high-impact solution that prioritizes real issues and automates remediation.

Why it’s #1 in Paid Tools:
Unlike typical scanners, Aikido doesn’t just find vulnerabilities—it auto-triages, auto-fixes, and auto-prioritizes them. It’s designed to scale security without overwhelming dev teams.

🔐 Key Features:

• All-in-One Security Dashboard: Combines SAST, SCA, IaC scanning, CSPM, DAST, and SBOM generation.
• AI-Powered Auto-Triage and Fixes: Uses AI to reduce false positives and open fix PRs with a click.
• Agentless Integration: Easy to integrate into GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, AWS, Azure, GCP, and more.
• Production-Safe DAST (Surface Monitoring): Actively discovers and tests live attack surfaces, including authenticated flows.
• Compliance-Ready: Helps with SOC 2, ISO 27001, and other audit requirements.
• Language & Framework Support: Supports JS/TS, Python, Go, Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, Kotlin, Scala, Dart, C++, and more.

Real-World Value:

• Ideal for startups to mid-size SaaS companies who want to offload AppSec pain without hiring full teams.
• Offers real-time feedback and tight Git integrations.
• Security posture across your code, dependencies, cloud infra, and more—in one place.

TLDR: It''s like your in-house security engineer—on autopilot.

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🥈Probely (Paid)

Probely is a modern DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) platform that’s tailored for developers and security teams to continuously scan, identify, and fix vulnerabilities in web applications and APIs. It focuses on usability, automation, and integration with CI/CD pipelines.

🛡️ Why Probely?
Probely is like having a virtual security expert continuously probing your app. It’s developer-first, scalable, and integrates easily into modern DevOps workflows.

Key Features:

• Web App & API Scanning: Supports scanning of traditional web apps and RESTful APIs (OpenAPI, Swagger).
• CI/CD Integrations: Native integrations with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, and more.
• Dev-Centric Reports: Vulnerability reports tailored for devs — includes fix recommendations, severity, and CVSS scores.
• Compliance-Driven: Offers reports and scan templates aligned with OWASP Top 10, PCI-DSS, ISO27001, etc.
• User Role Management: Granular permission controls for different roles in the org.
• Authenticated Scanning: Easily configure login flows for authenticated areas of your app.

Use Case:

Probely is great for SaaS companies, eCommerce platforms, and API-heavy apps that want to shift left and embed security earlier in the lifecycle — without slowing down releases.

Bonus: Includes retesting capabilities, meaning you can validate fixes right after patching.

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🥉Acunetix (Paid)

Acunetix is one of the most recognized enterprise-grade vulnerability scanners, designed to identify and prioritize security issues across complex web environments. Known for its speed, accuracy, and deep scanning capabilities, Acunetix is widely used by enterprises, pentesters, and compliance-focused teams.

🛡️ Why Acunetix?
It’s a powerful and mature solution that goes beyond surface-level scanning. From single-page apps to large corporate portals, Acunetix excels at finding deep vulnerabilities — fast and with fewer false positives.

Key Features:

• Deep Web App Scanning: Finds over 7,000 vulnerabilities including SQLi, XSS, CSRF, SSRF, SSTI, and more.
• Authenticated Scans: Handles modern login flows and even JavaScript-heavy SPAs (Single Page Applications).
• WAF Integration: Works with Web Application Firewalls like Imperva, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF for automatic rule generation.
• CI/CD Ready: Supports pipelines with plugins and API integrations.
• Compliance Reporting: Generates detailed reports for PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, HIPAA, OWASP Top 10, and more.
• Advanced Crawling Engine: Built to handle modern JavaScript-heavy applications using a Chromium-based engine.

Notable:

• Includes AcuSensor, a unique IAST-like agent to reduce false positives and provide extra details like source code traces.
• Available in on-premise and cloud-hosted versions.

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Alright — let''s get to the open-source ones.
I’ll start from the 1st open-source tool in our list...

1. Axiom – The Black Ops Framework for Bug Bounty Hunters, Red Teamers & Adversaries

Axiom isn’t mainstream — and that’s exactly why it’s so powerful. It''s a cloud-native offensive security framework designed for serious bug bounty hunters, red teamers, and yes, even state-level APTs or black hat operators.

While most recon tools run on a single VPS or local machine, Axiom scales horizontally, distributing your workloads across dozens (or hundreds) of disposable cloud instances. Think of it as a hacker''s Kubernetes for mass exploitation.

How It Works:

• You spin up multiple lightweight VPS "instances" (called droplets, boxes, etc.).
• Axiom dispatches your commands — such as nmap, httpx, ffuf, nuclei, subfinder, or custom scripts — to all instances in parallel.
• If your main VPS has a 1 Gbps line and you launch 10 instances: 💥 now you’re scanning with 10 Gbps.

It’s like building a personal botnet — only legal and surgical.

What Can You Do With Axiom?

• 🚀 Mass subdomain brute-forcing (millions of permutations across wordlists)
• 🔍 HTTP probing at scale (title, tech, status, CDN, WAF detection)
• 🧬 Nuclei scans across thousands of assets — in minutes
• 🔓 Vulnerability exploitation via custom modules or direct scripts
• 🌐 Port scanning, endpoint fuzzing, OSINT, takeover detection, and more

Axiom isn’t just fast — it’s persistent, stealthy, and built for chaos.
It''s the difference between fishing with a rod… and casting a net the size of the ocean.

You can customize it with your own modules, integrate it into CI/CD recon pipelines, or schedule recon/scan waves with tools like screen, cron, and notify.

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2. Nuclei – Precision Vulnerability Scanning, at Scale

Nuclei by ProjectDiscovery is the scalpel of web application scanning. It’s fast, lightweight, YAML-based, and open-source — but don’t be fooled by its simplicity. Nuclei is capable of fingerprinting technologies, detecting thousands of CVEs, and finding misconfigurations, secrets, exposed files, subdomain takeovers, CORS issues, cloud leaks, and much more.

But here’s where it gets lethal...

Nuclei + Axiom = Recon on Steroids

Alone, Nuclei is powerful.
With Axiom, it becomes an autonomous recon and exploitation fleet.

• Run thousands of templates across tens of thousands of targets in parallel.
• Use nuclei flags to control and filter signal:
  • -t or -et – include/exclude specific templates or paths
  • -tags – scan based on vulnerability category (e.g., exposures, cves, dns)
  • -severity – limit output to high, critical, or even info
  • -o – structured output for parsing
  • -json – perfect for logging, dashboards, or Slack/Telegram bots

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Introducing -ai: The AI-Powered Nuclei Mode

The new -ai flag (experimental) brings AI-assisted fuzzing and dynamic template generation.
Instead of just firing static payloads from templates, Nuclei with -ai intelligently crafts payloads based on response patterns, target behavior, and even prior known misconfigurations.

Imagine a scanner that not only checks for a known misconfig — but adapts if the WAF blocks it or the response changes.
That’s -ai.

Example:

nuclei -list subdomains.txt -ai "Find RDP open"

Real-world Bug Bounty Use Cases

• Run cloud misconfig templates with -tags cloud to hunt AWS/GCP/Azure exposures.
• Chain with katana/ffuf to feed discovered paths into Nuclei.
• Use -ai to bypass simple WAF rules or detect unknown 0-days by generating new templates.
• Pipe output to notify to alert you in real-time on Telegram, Discord, or Slack.

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Nuclei isn’t just a scanner. It’s a templated recon engine that scales, adapts, and hunts with surgical precision.
When paired with Axiom, it becomes your autonomous vulnerability battalion.

3. SQLMap / Ghauri – The Data Pillagers

SQL Injection (SQLi) is still one of the most devastating and widely exploited web vulnerabilities — even in 2025.
Let’s put it simply:

If your website is vulnerable to SQLi, your entire database is an open book.

An attacker can:

• Extract sensitive customer data
• Dump login credentials
• Modify or delete records
• Gain RCE (Remote Code Execution) in some cases
• And even sell your company’s real-time business data on dark markets

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SQLMap – The Classic Beast

SQLMap is the OG of automated SQL injection tools — stable, battle-tested, and feature-rich.

Key Features:

• Supports boolean-based, time-based, error-based, UNION-based, and stacked queries
• Smart detection, auto fingerprinting of DBMS
• --dump, --tables, --search --columns e.g. mobile, --os-shell, --passwords
• Evasion via --tamper, proxy support, user-agent spoofing

You can even run it blind, and it will still pull data like a champ.

Example:

sqlmap -u "https://target.com/page?id=1" --dbms=mysql --dump --batch --random-agent --charset=utf-8 --tamper=space2comment,charencode,between,randomcase --exclude-sysdbs -p "id" --results-file output

Ghauri – The Modern Alternative

Ghauri is a fast, more aggressive alternative written in Python that handles modern WAFs and JSON-based requests better.

Why use Ghauri?

• REST/GraphQL injection support
• JSON and nested data payload crafting
• Brutally fast with concurrency
• Detects and extracts even in complex APIs

Perfect for modern web apps, mobile APIs, or GraphQL endpoints, where SQLMap might miss things.

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Why Every Pentester Needs SQLi Tools

Even one injectable parameter in a POST request or a forgotten subdomain can:

• Unveil customer PII
• Reveal internal credentials
• Grant full access to admin panels
• Let attackers monitor your business in real-time (daily revenue? user signups? orders? mobile numbers?)

And yes — this data gets sold for over $1000s (or maybe $1000/day).

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Combo with Recon:

• Pair SQLMap/Ghauri with tools like:
  • gau + waymore + katana + gf sql to extract SQLi-prone parameters
  • waybackurls, ParamSpider, katana for old endpoints
  • Burp to capture real requests and replay via -r request.txt

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Whether it’s a legacy web form, a forgotten API, or an internal dashboard —
SQLi is still the one-bug-to-rule-them-all.
SQLMap and Ghauri make sure you don’t miss it.

4. Burp Suite – The Swiss Army Knife of Web Pentesting

When it comes to manual web application testing, nothing comes close to Burp Suite. Whether you’re fuzzing a single request, brute-forcing a hidden parameter, or chaining auth bypass with IDOR — Burp gives you full control over the HTTP layer.

Burp isn’t just a tool. It’s a full-featured ecosystem.

• Burp Community Edition – Great for intercepting, basic repeater/fuzzing.
• Burp Professional – Unlocks active scanning, advanced crawling, and hundreds of Pro-only extensions.

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Extensions That Make Burp God-Tier

Through the BApp Store, you can integrate powerful community-built tools directly into Burp. Here''s a quickfire list of must-have extensions:

Logger++

• Supercharged request/response logging with filters, tags, and export features.
• Essential for investigations, token tracking, or replaying filtered traffic.

Autorize

• Automate broken access control testing.
• Sends all requests with different session tokens to detect IDORs, admin panel leaks, or privilege escalation.

AuthMatrix

• Role-based access control testing.
• Map and fuzz permissions across multiple accounts and roles.

Turbo Intruder

• High-speed, Python-scriptable fuzzer built by PortSwigger.
• Perfect for race conditions, token reuse, or custom payload logic.

Reflector

• Helps identify reflected parameters and potential XSS endpoints with minimal effort.

Hackvertor

• Converts payloads (e.g., encode to hex, base64, JS escape, etc.) in real-time — saves tons of manual effort during complex injections.

SAML Raider, JWT Editor, JSON Beautifier

• Specialized plugins for modern web tech — SSO, JWTs, API tokens, etc.

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Burp AI & Shadow Repeater

Burp AI (Enterprise & Pro) uses machine learning to enhance scans, detect more subtle vulnerabilities, and reduce false positives.

• Shadow Repeater is a recent addition that lets you clone, tweak, and diff requests rapidly.
• You can track how minor header or body changes affect response behavior (great for bypasses or filter testing).

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Automation & Workflows

• Use Burp Macros + Sessions Handling Rules to simulate full login flows, token refresh, CSRF bypass, etc.
• You can even automate recon-like behavior with Burp Scanner + Crawl-Only mode on large scopes.

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Real-World Use Cases

• Fuzz parameter pollution + bypass WAF via Turbo Intruder
• Monitor access control logic across users using AuthMatrix + Autorize
• Trace a CSRF bypass flow with Logger++ + Repeater
• Pipe Burp requests to sqlmap or ghauri via -r burp-request.txt

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Burp Suite is what turns a curious hacker into a focused weapon.
It''s where recon, exploitation, and automation merge into one fluid motion.

5. Katana – The Web Crawler for Modern Recon

Katana, developed by ProjectDiscovery, is a next-gen web crawler designed with offensive security in mind. Unlike traditional crawlers that get lost in JavaScript-heavy environments or miss hidden endpoints, Katana is built for speed, depth, and automation — and it can actively and passively discover routes with surgical accuracy.

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Why Katana Is a Recon Beast

• Passive Crawling: Extracts links and endpoints from responses, HTML, JS files, sitemaps, robots.txt, CSP headers.
• Active Crawling: Follows and fuzzes links dynamically to reveal deep and hidden paths.
• JS File Parsing: Katana excels at ripping endpoints out of JavaScript, one of the most overlooked goldmines in recon.
• Custom Header & Cookie Support: Easily crawl authenticated areas with session tokens.
• Multithreaded: Super fast and scalable for bug bounty and wide-scope scans.

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Katana Flags You Should Know:

katana -u https://target.com -jc -jsl -f qurl -o endpoints.txt

• -jc → JS crawl enabled (extracts inline + linked)
• -jsl → JS link discovery (finds deeply embedded endpoints)
• -f qurl → Output only URL paths (clean for chaining)
• -o → Save output to file

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Chaining Katana with Other Tools

This is where Katana really shines. Its output can feed directly into your favorite tools:

Feed to Nuclei for Vulnerability Scanning:

cat endpoints.txt | nuclei -t templates/ -dast -o nuclei-findings.txt

Pipe JS endpoints into Gf filters:

cat endpoints.txt | gf sqli | anew sqli.txt | axs -m sqlmap

Katana + GF + Arjun + Dalfox

Let’s say you’re targeting example.com and want to chain a deep recon + XSS discovery pipeline:

# 1. Crawl all endpoints
katana -u https://example.com -jc -jsl -f url -silent -o endpoints.txt

# 2. Filter potential XSS params using gf
cat endpoints.txt | gf xss | sort -u > xss_candidates.txt

# 3. Use Arjun to guess hidden parameters
cat xss_candidates.txt | while read url; do
  arjun -u "$url" -t 10 -oJ arjun-params.json
done

# 4. Send all endpoints to Dalfox for XSS scanning
dalfox file arjun-params.json --deep-scan --silence --waf-evasion -b "bxss-server" --format json -o dalfox-findings.json

This pipeline finds:

• Deep JS routes
• GET + hidden parameters
• Reflected and stored XSS
• Context-aware filtering

Katana gives you deep eyes on the surface and under the hood.
When you chain it with gf + arjun + dalfox, you build a fully autonomous, offensive XSS discovery machine.

6. FFUF – Fast Fuzzing for Hidden Gold

FFUF (Fuzz Faster U Fool) is one of the fastest and most flexible web fuzzing tools out there. It helps you discover:

• Hidden directories
• Secret endpoints
• Parameters
• Virtual hosts
• Authentication bypasses
• And even hidden files in S3 buckets, backup paths, APIs, and more

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Why FFUF Rules

• Blazing Fast with Go-powered concurrency
• Flexible Modes: URL fuzzing, parameter fuzzing, wordlist injection anywhere in the request
• Color-coded output makes filtering easy
• Can be chained with Burp, Katana, gau, waybackurls, etc.

7. sXtract – Extract Intelligence from Shodan Like a Pro

sXtract (aka shodanXtract) may look minimal, but don’t let its size fool you — it''s one of the most efficient reconnaissance tools for pulling threat intelligence and surface data from Shodan. Designed by a hacker, for hackers.

We wrote it for speed, stealth, and simplicity, and it quietly outperforms tools 5x its size — no GUI, no bloat, just raw data extraction from Shodan across IP ranges, domains, hashes, and CVE queries.

Why It Hits Hard

• Extracts IPs tied to exposed dashboards, vulnerable services, and live CVEs
• Works with IP ranges, domains, favicon hashes, and custom query strings
• Lightweight, Go-powered, and fully scriptable for automation
• Pipelines perfectly into tools like ffuf, httpx, nuclei, masscan, etc.

Real-World Scenarios

• Detecting open Kibana, Jenkins, Grafana, or Docker dashboards
• Hunting for industrial systems on SCADA ports (102, 502, 20000)
• Identifying targets with exploitable CVEs (RCE, unauth access, etc.)
• Finding organizations'' edge infrastructure via wildcard subdomain mapping

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You don’t need to be loud to be powerful.
sXtract quietly maps the exposed edges of the internet — one wildcard, one hash, one CVE at a time.

8. Naabu – The Fast Lane to Open Ports

Naabu is a lightning-fast TCP port scanner developed by ProjectDiscovery. It focuses on simplicity and speed, built specifically for large-scale reconnaissance and automation in offensive security.

Where tools like nmap go deep, Naabu goes wide — perfect for enumerating thousands of targets at once, identifying open ports and feeding downstream scanners like sXtract, httpx, nuclei, or ffuf.

Key Features:

• Blazing speed (written in Go, multithreaded)
• CIDR support and large IP ranges
• Silent mode to avoid noise in output
• Supports SYN, connect, and UDP scanning
• Custom ports, rate limits, retries

• It’s the scout in your recon army
• It tells you where services are alive
• It''s scriptable, fast, and built for scale
• Works beautifully with the ProjectDiscovery recon stack (nuclei, httpx, uncover)

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Ports are doors. Naabu finds which ones are open.
And once you find them — you test, exploit, and own.

9. Kiterunner (kr)

Wordlist-driven endpoint discovery for API & web servers — on steroids

Kiterunner by Assetnote is a smarter alternative to ffuf/dirsearch, especially for structured API fuzzing and authenticated endpoint discovery.

What Makes It Cool:

• Uses custom-built API wordlists from real Swagger/OpenAPI docs
• Supports multiple verbs (GET/POST/PUT/etc.)
• Can test routes + behaviors (like 405 vs 200)
• Can be used with headers, auth tokens, etc.

Use jwt_tool, Autorize, or cookie-monster in tandem for IDOR/Auth testing after discovering hidden API endpoints.

Why it’s special?
It''s not just brute-forcing file paths — it''s reverse engineering API logic.

10. NetExec – The Swiss Army Knife for Internal Pentesting

NetExec (formerly CrackMapExec) is an all-in-one post-exploitation framework for Windows networks. It’s designed to automate common Active Directory attacks, lateral movement, and credentials validation.

If you’re working with a target that’s running SMB, WinRM, RDP, LDAP, MSSQL — NetExec will own it.

Features:

• Credential spraying & password validation over SMB, RDP, WinRM, etc.
• Built-in modules for Mimikatz, Kerberoasting, SAM dumping, LSASS dumping
• Supports pass-the-hash, pass-the-ticket, Kerberos auth
• Dumping NTDS.dit, gathering domain trust relationships
• Identify vulnerable misconfigs (e.g., SMB signing, LLMNR)

Why It Belongs in Your Arsenal

• Red teamers use it for fast foothold-to-own pivoting
• Bug bounty hunters with VPN/internal access can identify low-hanging misconfigs
• Works perfectly in AD/Windows-heavy environments — and even hybrid cloud setups
• Community-supported and heavily modular, so you can write your own modules or use prebuilt ones

"One credential to rule them all"
With NetExec, you can spray, validate, pivot, and dominate — all in a single pipeline.

11. Ligolo-ng (Next Generation Pivoting)

Think Meterpreter, but stealthier, faster, and without admin rights.

Ligolo-ng is a lightweight and high-speed tunneling tool that allows pentesters to pivot into internal networks via reverse TCP/TLS connections — without using SOCKS or proxychains. It creates a full TUN interface, enabling tools like nmap, netcat, or even GUI apps to work natively over the tunnel.

Why it’s special:

• Does not require root on the target (agent runs unprivileged)
• Supports TCP, UDP, ICMP (echo)
• Maintains tunnel persistence even during flaky network connections
• Works seamlessly with Let''s Encrypt for TLS setup
• WebSocket support for bypassing WAFs and tricky firewalls
• Way more stable than tools like Chisel, and way faster than SSH-based tunnels

Use cases:

• Internal network pivoting after initial compromise
• Port scanning with native tools (no proxychains!)
• Running tools like sqlmap, ffuf, burp collaborator, or even GUI-based tools inside the tunneled network

Once connected, a virtual TUN interface is created. Now, nmap, netcat, curl, etc. behave as if you''re inside the network — without extra hassle.

Security Bonus:

• Works without requiring raw socket access on agent side
• Automatic recovery of tunnels
• No need to install extra dependencies

Pro Tip:

Combine Ligolo-ng with BloodHound, CrackMapExec, or SharpHound for deep AD exploitation during internal assessments.

12. Impacket

If you''re touching internal networks, Impacket is one of your best friend.

Impacket is a collection of Python scripts and classes focused on crafting and manipulating network protocols — especially for Active Directory, SMB, Kerberos, NTLM, and more. It’s widely used in lateral movement, credential abuse, and post-exploitation during internal network pentests or red teaming.

What it does:

• Perform NTLM relays, Kerberos ticket abuse (Pass-the-Ticket / Pass-the-Hash), SMB shares dumping, remote command execution, and more.
• Includes tools like:
  • secretsdump.py: Dump NTLM hashes from remote systems
  • wmiexec.py: Run remote commands over WMI
  • smbclient.py: Lightweight SMB client
  • smbexec.py: Like Metasploit’s psexec module
  • ntlmrelayx.py: Perform NTLM relaying with various attack vectors

Real-world attacks made easy:

• Lateral movement with wmiexec.py or atexec.py
• Credential dumping from domain controllers
• Kerberos attacks like Silver Ticket / Kerberoasting (combined with tools like Rubeus)
• Dumping secrets from LSASS with secretsdump.py (via DCSync or local SAM extraction)

Pro Tip:

• Combine Impacket with CrackMapExec, NetExec, and LaZagne to automate and escalate credential gathering from remote systems.
• Use Ligolo-ng to tunnel into internal networks and run Impacket over a stealthy connection.
• Rotate between Impacket tools for persistent access, enumeration, and privilege escalation inside Active Directory.

Bonus:

Many C2 frameworks (like Mythic or Covenant) internally use Impacket to handle protocol interactions

13. Eyeballer

Give those screenshots a quick eyeballing — let AI do the visual recon.

Eyeballer is an AI-powered screenshot analyzer that classifies web app screenshots into helpful categories like Login Page, Old-Looking, Web Application, Custom 404, or Parked Domain. It’s perfect for large-scope recon operations after mass screenshotting (via GoWitness, EyeWitness, etc.).

Use Case:

After you''ve used tools like Axiom to mass-screenshot thousands of web hosts, Eyeballer helps prioritize which screenshots to investigate first — especially valuable in bug bounty and external pentest scopes.

Categories Eyeballer Detects:

• Old-Looking Sites: Often outdated = usually vulnerable
• Login Pages: Great for brute-force, credential stuffing, and auth bypass testing
• Webapps: Dynamic, interactive applications = attack surface
• Custom 404s: Visually rich but functionally dead ends (ignore most of them)
• Parked Domains: Not in scope; weed them out

Outputs:

• results.html: Human-readable classification
• results.csv: Machine-readable format for automation

Live demo: eyeballer.bishopfox.com

Features:

• Works with screenshots from GoWitness, EyeWitness
• Uses CNN models (TensorFlow)
• 93%+ Binary Accuracy on detection
• GPU support for training/acceleration
• Can be retrained on your own labeled dataset (Kaggle data provided)

14. PureDNS

PureDNS is a powerful, high-performance DNS resolver and wordlist brute-forcer made for large-scale subdomain enumeration. Built for reliability and speed, it''s widely used in bug bounty and red teaming workflows where precision DNS resolution matters.

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Why PureDNS?

When running passive or brute-force recon, most tools rely on the system’s default resolver or public resolvers (like Google or Cloudflare), which are rate-limited or prone to false positives. PureDNS, on the other hand, lets you:

• Use your own list of rotated DNS resolvers
• Avoid wildcard DNS noise
• Perform massive wordlist resolution reliably

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Features

• Fast DNS resolution using multiple resolvers
• Built-in wildcard filtering
• Seamlessly integrates with tools like amass, subfinder, and dnsx
• Supports resolving millions of subdomains with precision
• Perfect for chaining with massdns, dnsx, or nuclei

Pro Tip:

Combine PureDNS + dnsx + httpx in a pipeline to go from subdomain resolution → alive checking → nuclei scans or manual testing.

15. BruteSpray

BruteSpray is a fast, multi-protocol credential brute-forcing tool rewritten entirely in Golang, making it far more efficient and robust than its Python predecessor. It’s perfect for when you’ve got open services from Nmap, Nessus, or Nexpose scans, and you want to automate credential testing across them at scale.

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Why BruteSpray?

Let’s say you’ve done your recon, scanned the network, and now you’ve got open SSH, FTP, RDP, or MySQL services all over the place. You could test credentials manually… or you could fire up BruteSpray and hit all of them in parallel.

BruteSpray was designed for speed and flexibility

• Supports over 20 services like SSH, MySQL, FTP, RDP, SMB, VNC, etc.
• Integrates directly with Nmap, Nessus, Nexpose, JSON, or custom IP/service lists
• Takes in custom username and password wordlists
• Supports SOCKS5 proxies, CIDR ranges, and specific interfaces (e.g., tun0)

Supported Services

• ssh, ftp, telnet, mssql, postgresql, mysql
• imap, pop3, smbnt, smtp, snmp, vnc, oracle
• rdp, vmauthd, mongodb, teamspeak, asterisk, xmpp
• Beta services like RDP, NNTP, Oracle, XMPP are still improving

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Pro Tip

Use BruteSpray after combining Nmap + Masscan outputs to find exposed services, and follow up with credential testing for low-hanging fruit. If paired with valid creds from LaZagne, it can lead to quick pivots inside the network.