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Nmap
Nmap is a very versatile tool developed to scan addresses (IPV6 included), this tool allows the users to gather a mass amount of information about the target quickly, information including open ports, + much, much more.
Nmap supports a large number of scanning techniques such as: UDP, TCP connect(), TCP SYN (half open), ftp proxy (bounce attack), ICMP (ping sweep), FIN, ACK sweep, Xmas Tree, SYN sweep, IP Protocol, and Null scan.

Wireshark
A very powerful network troubleshooting and analysis tool,
Wire shark provides the ability to view data from a live network, and supports hundreds of protocols and media formats.

Cain & Abel
Cain and Abel is a revolutionary tool that provides many functions that are able to do various password retrieval jobs, cracking passwords, sniffing networks, and routing/analyzing protocols. This tool is Windows-only, unlike many other tools that exist, this is a pleasant twist to modern penetration testing and forensic tools.

MetaSploit
MetaSploit, a very powerful network security and analysis tool, used often for penetration attacks, this tool has a clean interface and easily gathers the information that you seek.

Ettercap
Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones) and includes many feature for network and host analysis. (Taken from their website)

Nessus
The Nessus tool provides high-speed data discovery, asset profiling, configuration auditing, and vulnerability analysis of networks.

Havij
Havij is the most common and heard of testing tool for SQLI injection and many other web-based injection types. It fluently provides the site's scan, admin look-up, password cracking, and database retrieval. It literally makes it a breeze to hack, and find, vulnerable websites.

Kismet
Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and (with appropriate hardware) can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. Kismet also supports plugins which allow sniffing other media such as DECT. (Taken from Kismet website)

BackTrack Linux
Back Track is a widely popular bootable Live-CD of a Linux Distro. Back Track offers a vast variety of penetration testing tools, along with those for network attacks, and supports many other forms of testing/attacking, for VOIP networks, Websites + more. The tool's interface and design provides an easy to use layout.

w3af
W3af is an extremely popular, powerful, and flexible framework for finding and exploiting web application vulnerabilities. It is easy to use and extend and features dozens of web assessment and exploitation plugins. In some ways it is like a web-focused Metasploit. (Taken from nmap.org)

Encase
EnCase is a suite of computer forensics software, commonly used by law enforcement. Its wide use has made it a de-facto standard in forensics. It is made to collect data from a computer in a forensically sound manner (employing checksums to help detect tampering). (Taken from Nmap.org.)


Helix
Helix is a live bootable Ubuntu CD, that contains a multitude of forensic tools involving cellphones, computers, file systems, images, and tied into its sheer power is a friendly and easy-to-use interface.

Acunetix
Acunetix is a strong, and very popular website security tool. It provides many tools to test your website, (or others) for various injections. Acunetix WVS automatically checks your web applications for SQL Injection, XSS & other web vulnerabilities.

Burp Suite
Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications. Its various tools work seamlessly together to support the entire testing process, from initial mapping and analysis of an application's attack surface, through to finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities. (Taken from http://portswigger.net/burp/)

What is malware? Malware is exactly what its name implies: mal (meaning bad, in the sense of malignant or malicious rather than just poorly done) + ware (short for software). More specifically, malware is software that does not benefit the computer's owner, and may even harm it, and so is purely parasitic.

The Many Faces of Malware

According to Wikipedia, there are in fact eleven distinct types of malware, and even more sub-types of each.

1. Viruses. The malware that's on the news so much, even your grandmother knows what it is. You probably already have heard plenty about why this kind of software is bad for you, so there's no need to belabor the point.

2. Worms. Slight variation on viruses. The difference between viruses and worms is that viruses hide inside the files of real computer programs (for instance, the macros in Word or the VBScript in many other Microsoft applications), while worms do not infect a file or program, but rather stand on their own.

3. Wabbits. Be honest: had you ever even heard of wabbits before (outside of Warner Bros. cartoons)? According to Wikipedia, wabbits are in fact rare, and it's not hard to see why: they don't do anything to spread to other machines. A wabbit, like a virus, replicates itself, but it does not have any instructions to email itself or pass itself through a computer network in order to infect other machines. The least ambitious of all malware, it is content simply to focus on utterly devastating a single machine.

4. Trojans. Arguably the most dangerous kind of malware, at least from a social standpoint. While Trojans rarely destroy computers or even files, that's only because they have bigger targets: your financial information, your computer's system resources, and sometimes even massive denial-of-service attack launched by having thousands of computers all try to connect to a web server at the same time.

5. Spyware. In another instance of creative software naming, spyware is software that spies on you, often tracking your internet activities in order to serve you advertising. (Yes, it's possible to be both adware and spyware at the same time.)

6. Backdoors. Backdoors are much the same as Trojans or worms, except that they do something different: they open a "backdoor" onto a computer, providing a network connection for hackers or other malware to enter or for viruses or sp@m to be sent out through.

7. Exploits. Exploits attack specific security vulnerabilities. You know how Microsoft is always announcing new updates for its operating system? Often enough the updates are really trying to close the security hole targeted in a newly discovered exploit.

8. Rootkit. The malware most likely to have a human touch, rootkits are installed by crackers (bad hackers) on other people's computers. The rootkit is designed to camouflage itself in a system's core processes so as to go undetected. It is the hardest of all malware to detect and therefore to remöve; many experts recommend completely wiping your hard drive and reinstalling everything fresh.

9. Keyloggers. No prïze for guessing what this software does: yes, it logs your keystrokes, i.e., what you type. Typically, the malware kind of keyloggers (as opposed to keyloggers deliberately installed by their owners to use in diagnosing computer problems) are out to log sensitive information such as passwords and financial details.

10. Dialers. Dialers dial telephone numbers via your computer's modem. Like keyloggers, they're only malware if you don't want them. Dialers either dial expensive premium-rate telephone numbers, often located in small countries far from the host computer; or, they dial a hacker's machine to transmit stolen data.

11. URL injectors. This software "injects" a given URL in place of certain URLs when you try to visit them in your browser. Usually, the injected URL is an affïliate link to the target URL. An affïliate link is a special link used to track the traffïc an affïliate (advertiser) has sent to the original website, so that the original website can pay commissions on any salës from that traffïc.

12. Adware. The least dangerous and most lucrative malware (lucrative for its distributors, that is). Adware displays ads on your computer. The Wikipedia entry on malware does not give adware its own category even though adware is commonly called malware. As Wikipedia notes, adware is often a subset of spyware. The implication is that if the user chooses to allow adware on his or her machine, it's not really malware, which is the defense that most adware companies take. In reality, however, the choice to install adware is usually a lëgal farce involving placing a mention of the adware somewhere in the installation materials, and often only in the licensing agreement, which hardly anyone reads.

Are you ready to take on this dirty dozen? Don't go it alone. Make sure you have at least one each of antivirus and antispyware.

Credits : joel