For this book, Kali Linux will be our platform of choice. Kali Linux is a free penetration testing distribution platform that offers a vast range of tools, such as Metasploit for network penetration testing, Nmap for port and vulnerability scanning, Aircrack-Ng for wireless network testing, the Social engineering toolkit (SET) for social engineering attacks, and many more.
Kali Linux is a maintained distribution; this means that it's constantly updated and maintained. At the time of writing, the current version of Kali Linux is 2019.1.
Version 2019.1 introduced a massive update to Metasploit (Metasploit will be covered in Chapter 5, Diving into the Metasploit Framework), including bug fixes, kernel updates, and more.