Top 3 Phishing Tools for Ethical Hacking
Introduction
While phishing attacks can be used by malicious actors to steal personal data or spread malware, ethical hackers can use similar tactics to test for vulnerabilities in an organization’s security infrastructure. These tools are designed to help ethical hackers simulate real-world phishing attacks and test the response of an organization’s employees to these attacks. By using these tools, ethical hackers can identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s security and help them take the necessary steps to protect against phishing attacks. In this article, we’ll explore the top 3 phishing tools for ethical hacking.
SEToolkit
Social Engineering Toolkit (SEToolkit) is a Linux toolkit designed to aid social engineering attacks. It includes several automated social engineering models. A use case for SEToolkit is cloning a website to harvest credentials. This can be done in the following steps:
- In your Linux terminal, enter setoolkit.
- From the menu, choose the first option by entering 1 into the terminal.
- From the results, input 2 in the terminal to select Website Attack Vectors. Select Credential Harvester Attack Method, then choose Web Template.
- Select your preferred template. An IP address that redirects to the cloned site is returned.
- If someone on the same network visits the IP address and inputs their credentials, it is harvested and can be viewed in the terminal.
A scenario where this can be applied is if you are within a network and you know a web application the organization uses. You can just clone this application and spin it up telling a user to change their password or set their password.
Kingphisher
Kingphisher is a complete fishing simulation platform that lets you manage your fishing campaigns, send multiple fishing campaigns, work with multiple users, create HTML pages, and save them as templates. The graphic user interface is easy to use and comes preloaded with Kali. The interface also allows you to track if a visitor opens a page or if a visitor clicks a link. If you need a graphic design interface to get started with fishing or social engineering attacks, Kingphisher is a good option
Gophish
This is one of the most popular phishing simulation frameworks. Gofish is a complete phishing framework that you can use to perform any kind of fishing attack. It has a very clean and user-friendly interface. The platform can be used to perform multiple phishing attacks.
You can set up different fishing campaigns, different sending profiles, landing pages, and email templates.
Creating a Gophish campaign
- On the left pane of the console, click Campaigns.
- On the popup, Input the necessary details.
- Launch the campaign and send a test mail to ensure it’s working
- Your Gophish instance is ready for phishing campaigns.
Conclusion
In conclusion, phishing attacks remain a significant threat to organizations of all sizes, making it imperative for ethical hackers to keep themselves constantly updated with the latest tools and techniques to defend against such attacks. The three phishing tools we discussed in this article – GoPhish, Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET), and King Phisher – offer a range of powerful features that can help ethical hackers test and improve their organization’s security posture. While each tool has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, by understanding how they work and selecting the one that best suits your specific needs, you can enhance your ability to identify and mitigate phishing attacks.
