Kia Zhi Tang (Ryen Tang)

Kia Zhi Tang (Ryen Tang)

Technology Evangelist, Infrastructure as Code Developer, Automation Guru

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Getting Kali distro environment on Windows for SecOps or DevOps

7 minute read

Previously, I blogged about:

Today, I will be sharing an additional distro for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that targets SecOps more than DevOps and most likely will be my favourite distro that will be a permanent resident on my Windows.

Let me introduce to you, Kali Linux a Debian-derived linux distribution primarily for hacking and penetration testing. And probably one of the most advanced penetration testing distribution, ever.

This walk-through demonstrates on how you can enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), maintain your linux distro environment and upgrade the linux distro instance to stay ahead. Let’s get started with command lines.

Getting Started with Kali on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

In this blog post, I will be documenting the basic steps in getting Bash and other common linux tools from Kali distro working on Windows 10 using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature.

What is actually Windows Subsystem for Linux? In short, it is a Windows feature on Windows 10 that allows developers to run linux environment directly on Windows without deploying a virtual machine. That means you get to use Bash and many other tools that focus primarily on linux first to work on Windows.

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Pre-requisite requirements

  • Windows 10 Build 16215 or later
  • Windows Server 1709 or later

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Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux feature on Windows 10

To enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux Feature on Windows 10 and reboot the Windows 10 using PowerShell.

Note: A reboot of the Windows 10 operating system is required after enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux feature

  • Launch Windows PowerShell with elevated privileges
  • Use the Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature PowerShell cmdlet to enable the feature
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Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature `
    -FeatureName "Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux" `
    -Online `
    -NoRestart:$False ;

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How to obtain Kali distro instance for Windows

Once you have verified that your current environment meets the pre-requisite requirements and you have enabled the Windows Subsystem for Linux feature.

Let’s get started with obtaining Kali distro instance with Windows Subsystem for Linux for Windows 10 or Windows Server.

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Downloading Kali distro instance

In this example, we will use Invoke-WebRequest PowerShell cmdlet to download the linux distro application package to your home folder.

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# Download Kali application for WSL
Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Uri "https://aka.ms/wsl-kali-linux" `
    -OutFile "~\Kali.appx" `
    -UseBasicParsing ;

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Installation for Windows 10

Natively, you can use Add-AppxPackage PowerShell cmdlet to add the linux distro application package to your Windows 10.

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# Install the Kali 2018.3 WSL application
Add-AppxPackage `
    -Path "~\Kali.appx" ;

During your initial launch of Kali on Windows 10, you will be requested to configure your new UNIX username and password.

Note: This setup a normal non-administrative user account that will login by default when you launch the distro. The username and password does not require to be same as your Windows user account. To elevate privileges in the distro instance, use sudo and input your password. For more information, you are refer to this documentation here.

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Installation for Windows Server

In this particular Kali distro package release, the process is slightly different from the other linux distro packages because it is packaged differently and you will immediately notice the differences in the compressed file content structure.

In order install into Windows Server, you will need to repeat the use of Rename-Item to rename the application package extension and execute Expand-Archive to uncompress the file process twice.

To start of on Windows Server, you will have use Rename-Item PowerShell cmdlet to rename the linux distro application package extension to a compressed file extension.

After the file has been renamed to a compressed file extension, you will use Expand-Archive PowerShell cmdlet to expand the compressed file to your temporary folder or ~\AppData\Local\Temp\Kali user temporary folder location.

Next, you will have use Rename-Item PowerShell cmdlet to rename the DistroLauncher-Appx_1.1.4.0_x64.appx application package extension to a compressed file extension again and use Expand-Archive PowerShell cmdlet to expand the compressed file to your home folder or ~\.wsl\distro\ custom home folder location.

After the file has been expanded to the destination, use the Start-Process PowerShell cmdlet to launch the executable to begin the initial configuration of the linux distro instance.

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# Rename the file extension to compressed file extension
Rename-Item `
    -Path "~\Kali.appx" `
    -NewName "Kali.zip" ;

# Expand the compressed file to destination
Expand-Archive `
    -Path "~\Kali.zip" `
    -DestinationPath "~\AppData\Local\Temp\Kali" ;

Rename-Item `
    -Path "~\AppData\Local\Temp\Kali\DistroLauncher-Appx_1.1.4.0_x64.appx" `
    -NewName "Kali.zip" ;

# Expand the compressed file to destination
Expand-Archive `
    -Path "~\AppData\Local\Temp\Kali\Kali.zip" `
    -DestinationPath "~\.wsl\distro\Kali" ;

# Launch the distro setup
Start-Process `
    -FilePath "~\.wsl\distro\Kali\kali.exe" ;

Once the kali.exe is running, the installation will begin and you will be requested to configure your new UNIX username and password.

Note: This setup a normal non-administrative user account that will login by default when you launch the distro. The username and password does not require to be same as your Windows user account. To elevate privileges in the distro instance, use sudo and input your password. For more information, you are refer to this documentation here.

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How to update the Kali distro instance

When you switched into the linux distro for the first time, you will need to use the linux distro’s preferred package manager to update and upgrade those installed packages. This is because most of the linux distro are shipped with an empty/minimal package catalog.

For Debian-derived Kali Linux distribution, we will use apt update command to update the packages index and perform apt upgrade to upgrade those packages based on the up to date packages index. For more information about apt, you can refer to the documentation here.

Note: Microsoft does not maintain those linux distro and the linux distro instance running on Windows Subsystem for Linux are not maintained by Windows Updates.

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# Update and upgrade Kali
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

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How to validate Kali distro instance version

Because Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution, you can check the Kali distro instance version, use the cat command on /etc/debian_version file.

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# Display Kali version
cat /etc/debian_version

By using cat command on /etc/debian_version file, you will get an output of the Kali release name.

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kali-rolling

If you are interested on the operating system release information, use the cat command on /etc/os-release file.

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# Display Kali release
cat /etc/os-release

And you will obtain the the operating system release information as below.

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PRETTY_NAME="Kali GNU/Linux Rolling"
NAME="Kali GNU/Linux"
ID=kali
VERSION="2018.3"
VERSION_ID="2018.3"
ID_LIKE=debian
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
HOME_URL="https://www.kali.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.kali.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.kali.org/"

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How to perform an in-place upgrade of Kali

If you are still using Kali 2018.2 distro instance and wanted to test Kali 2018.3, you can use apt-get dist-upgrade command to upgrade your distro instance to Kali.

Note: At the time of this blog post publication, Kali Linux 2018.3 is the latest release.

Firstly, check your current sources list by using cat command on the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

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# Check your current sources list
cat /etc/apt/sources.list

The cat command will returns the current configured sources and validate the source list contains the following below.

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deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib

Finally, perform an apt update to update the package lists followed by apt full-upgrade to install the packages and upgrade Kali older rolling version to Kali latest rolling version.

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# Upgrade Kali older release to Kali 2018.3
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade

Once the upgrade has completed, check the Kali version.

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# Display Kali version
cat /etc/debian_version

You should get an output like below.

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kali-rolling

Next, you can check the release information.

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# Display Kali release
cat /etc/os-release

And operating system release information should contains the followings below.

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PRETTY_NAME="Kali GNU/Linux Rolling"
NAME="Kali GNU/Linux"
ID=kali
VERSION="2018.3"
VERSION_ID="2018.3"
ID_LIKE=debian
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
HOME_URL="https://www.kali.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.kali.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.kali.org/"

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Conclusion

This definitely a lovely addition to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for those security folks out there.

Now, you can have a Kali Linux derived from Debian GNU/Linux operating system running on Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows for hacking and penetration testing tool in your IT security arsenal.

If you find that this information useful, feel free to bookmark this or share it with your colleagues and friends.

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References

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