Bossie Awards 2015: The best open source networking and security software

BIND, Sendmail, OpenSSH, Cacti, Nagios, Snort — open source software seems to have been invented for networks, and many of the oldies and goodies are still going strong. Among our top picks in the category this year, you’ll find a mix of stalwarts, mainstays, newcomers, and upstarts perfecting the arts of network management, security monitoring, vulnerability assessment, rootkit detection, and much more.

The team behind Kali Linux revamped the popular security Linux distribution this year to make it faster and even more versatile. Kali sports a new 4.0 kernel, improved hardware and wireless driver support, and a snappier interface. The most popular tools are easily accessible from a dock on the side of the screen. The biggest change? Kali Linux is now a rolling distribution, with a continuous stream of software updates. Kali’s core system is based on Debian Jessie, and the team will pull packages continuously from Debian Testing, while continuing to add new Kali-flavored features on top.

The distribution still comes jam-packed with tools for penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, security forensics, Web application analysis, wireless networking and assessment, reverse engineering, and exploitation tools. Now the distribution has an upstream version checking system that will automatically notify users when updates are available for the individual tools. The distribution also features ARM images for a range of devices, including Raspberry Pi, Chromebook, and Odroids, as well as updates to the NetHunter penetration testing platform that runs on Android devices. There are other changes too: Metasploit Community/Pro is no longer included, because Kali 2.0 is not yet officially supported by Rapid7. 

— Fahmida Rashid