Kali Linux Introduces "Kali Purple" for Defensive Security Hardening

Kali Linux 2023.1 is released with major updates and introduces a new variant, “Kali Purple”.

It’s Kali Linux’s 10th anniversary. And the team have a few goodies for you. Kali Linux 2023.1 is the usual package refresh of Kali Linux, which is arriving with the latest desktop environments and mainline Kernel updates.

Kali Linux 2023.1: Introducing Kali Purple

The major highlight of this release is the “Kali Purple”, a new variant of Kali Linux with tools for “defensive security”. Kali team is currently releasing it as a technical preview.

Defensive security software enables security hardening in various areas, such as vulnerability scan, incident tracking and response, packet capture, intrusion detection and more. You can now use Kali Purple with all the tools built in for your application or enterprise.

You have the option to choose defensive packages during installation

Kali Purple is bringing in 100+ defensive tools, documentation, Kali CoPilot for automated attack script builder and many more tools.

Arkime – Full packet capture and analysis
CyberChef – The cyber swiss army knife
Elastic Security – Security Information and Event Management
GVM – Vulnerability scanner
TheHive – Incident response platform
Malcolm – Network traffic analysis tool suite
Suricata – Intrusion Detection System
Zeek – (another) Intrusion Detection System

Furthermore, to align with the guidelines of “National Institute of Standards and Technology Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (NISF CSF)”, separate menu items are configured for you. It includes separate applications with categories – Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover.

New menu groups as per CISF NSF guideline

In addition, a separate discord channel is created for Kali Purple for collaboration and additional help for the community.

Pip changes in Python

Python pip command is undergoing a change in Debian 12 Bookworm release (upcoming). The pip command is used to install Python modules. Since the modules are installed externally using pip, it might break the existing Debian installation.

Hence, from Debian 12 onwards, if you try to install any module using pip – you should get an “externally-managed-environment” error. See below.

You can install using pip in Kali and Debian

The Kali Linux team is providing a patch from this release onwards to enable you to install any module using pip. But it is temporary until the Debian 12 stable release.

So, if you are a developer using a Python environment in Kali Linux (or in Debian), you should definitely plan to deploy the modules using the apt command as below.

apt install python3-numpy

Desktop environment and other updates

The default desktop Xfce now features Xfce 4.18 version, which brings massive features, including split view, image preview and others in Thunar file managers. Also, the KDE Plasma edition now arrives with version 5.27 in Kali Linux 2023.1.

The default theme in the Xfce edition is improved with stunning looks; many new wallpapers are also included in this version.

Finally, the mainline Kernel 6.1 is now available in this release, providing the latest hardware, CPU, GPU and other supports.