How to install Kali Linux on Virtualbox? In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the easiest way in which you can install Kali Linux on your VirtualBox. Ready to roll? Let’s go!
What is Kali Linux and Why Do People Use It?
To do this is run Kali Linux in a virtual environment using VirtualBox on the attacking laptop. In VirtualBox I bridged my build-in wifi adapter to the virtual environment (I have no external USB wifi adapter). I use the following commands: echo 1 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ipforward arpspoof -i eth0 -t 192.168.1.63 -r 192.168.1.254. Download Kali Linux VirtualBox Image. Visit the Kali Linux official website and go to the download. Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is an open source project that is maintained and funded by Offensive Security Ltd, a provider of world-class information security training and penetration testing services. It was developed by Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns of.
Kali Linux is one of the best Linux distributions created for penetration testers. All the tools that a network security tester or a hacker might ever need, are pre-installed and set-up perfectly in this distribution making things really easy. This is not just limited to the software, even the hardware is perfectly integrated by using the right drivers to improve hardware functionality.
Install Kali Linux On Virtualbox Mac
What’s VirtualBox and Where Can I Get it?
VirtualBox is a virtualization software used to test different operating systems on simulated hardware. It allows you to run multiple operating systems independently without affecting your primary OS.
Difficult to understand? It really isn’t! Your operating system makes use of the physical hardware that’s allocated to it when the system is booted. VirtualBox takes a part of that hardware from the Operating system and allocates it to a VirtualMachine. The OS that’s installed inside a virtual machine works and runs exactly as it would run on regular hardware.
Basic terminology to note:
- Host Machine/System – The physical hardware that you’re using
- Guest Machine/System – The hardware that you allocate to your Virtual Machine through Virtualbox settings
- Host OS – The operating system that’s installed on your physical computer
- Guest OS – The operating system that you will install within a Virtual Machine
You can download VirtualBox from the official website (link to the website). The installation is very straightforward and you should have no difficulty in getting Virtualbox set up.
How To Install Kali Linux on VirtualBox?
If you’re installing Kali Linux on your computer as a secondary OS, you can go about installing it the same way you’d do for any other operating system. Download the ISO file from the official website (link to website), burn it to a USB or a CD, and boot from it.
We can follow similar steps while installing Kali Linux on Virtualbox too. But because of the popularity of virtual machines, there’s an option to directly load up a pre-configured Kali system on Virtualbox! So without wasting more time, let’s download the VirtualBox image and boot it up.
Install Kali Linux on VirtualBox Using the VirtualBox Image
This is the simplest way to go about installing Kali on Virtualbox. The virtual machine image files can be found right on the official website.
1. Download Kali Linux VirtualBox Image
Visit the Kali Linux official website and go to the download page.
On the downloads page, you can scroll down to find Kali Linux images for VMware and Virtualbox. For this tutorial, we’ll download the 64-bit Virtual Box image.
2. Import the OVA File to Install Kali Linux on VirtualBox
Once downloaded, you’ll have a .ova file which contains the complete data for the operating system to boot! Yes, it’s all set up and ready to start. All you need to do is import the “appliance” to install Kali Linux on Virtualbox.
To import the ova file:
- Open VirtualBox
- Click on the File menu
- Select Import Appliance…
A new window will pop up as shown in the below screenshot where you need to select the ova file.
I’ve selected the kali-linux-2020.1 VirtualBox file and then click “Next”. The immediate next screen will display the default settings for the virtual machine. You can choose to go with the defaults or edit them based on your requirements.
When you click on the import button, you’ll see a “Software License Agreement” pop-up like the one in the screenshot below. Simply agree and move ahead.
Hindi serial artist name list. Once you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions, the process to install Kali Linux on VirtualBox will begin. You’ll see the importing progress bar like the one below. This can take several minutes depending on the speed of your host system.
3. Boot Kali Linux on VirtualBox
The importing will take some time depending on the host system hardware that you have. For me, it took around 15 minutes. Once that’s done, you’ll see the operating system added to the list of Virtual Machines as shown in the screenshot below.
Select the operating system, and click on the start button on the top. This will boot the Virtual machine right away and will take you to the login screen like below:
The username and password are both kali
. Once you’re logged in, you can change the password using the passwd command in Linux.
That’s it! If you’ve read through till here, you should know how to install Kali Linux on Virtualbox. If you followed along, you will also have the Kali Linux system installed on your VirtualBox.
Here’s what the default setup looks like:
The best part is since the image comes pre-configured, you don’t even have to set up VirtualBox Guest Additions on it. Everything is already set up and you can start working right away!
Who Should Install Kali Linux on VirtualBox?
This is a choice that you’ll have to make based on the requirements that you have from the installed operating system. There are a few pros and cons when you install Kali Linux on Virtualbox. Let’s discuss these pros and cons below and you can decide if it’s something that you should consider for yourself instead of installing Kali as a secondary OS.
Pros of installing Kali Linux on VirtualBox
- Run multiple OS without affecting the main
- Play around with the OS without worrying about losing important data
- Manage resources as required
- VirtualBox installed OS’ are portable
- Create snapshots and roll-back changes with a single click
- Perfect for testing Operating systems
Cons of installing Kali Linux on VirtualBox
- Noticeably slower performance
- Limited support for GPU acceleration
- USB wifi adaptors work best when the OS is natively installed
- Due to the ease of rolling back changes, you’d not learn to troubleshoot
- An extra layer of abstraction between the physical hardware, operating system, and the guest OS
Finally…
So we’re done with setting up and installing Kali Linux 2020 on VirtualBox! The OS is made to be very fast and efficient even for Virtualbox and you’ll notice that as soon as you’re done installing it.
You can obviously download and install Kali using the Kali Linux ISO file if you want to learn the complete setup process from scratch. That entire process is very straightforward too and the Kali Linux installer does most of the work for you. But for the purpose of getting an up and running Kali Linux installed on VirtualBox, the Vbox image is the perfect way to go.
We hope this tutorial proved useful to you. Make sure you bookmark our website for more awesome tutorials like these in the future!
Perhaps many of you want to use more than one operating system at the same time for different purposes (gaming, working, programming, hacking, designing, etc…). Obviously, each operating system has its own strengths. If you have been using Windows or Mac OS but now you’re a little bit curious about Linux and considering install Linux on your device, sure you can install parallelly Kali Linux with your current OS. However, it can be able to lead to many problems when you install 2 OS on your machine and in some cases, it is very frustrating and time-consuming when problems occur. Then, we have an alternative solution which is more handy in some cases when we use a virtual machine. Instead of simultaneously installing 2 parallel systems on your real machine, you’re able to install the OS(s) that you want in the virtual machine. It saves time, easy to install, unlimited the OS that you want and totally isolated with your OS you’re currently using.
In this article, I want to introduce to you “How to install Kali Linux on Virtual Box on MacOS X”.
First, these are two things you need to do:
- Download Kali Linux: CLICK HERE.
- Download VirtualBox: CLICK HERE.
When you’re done, start the installation by opening VirtualBox
Click to “New button” this window will appear
Kali Linux Virtual Machine On Mac
Pick a name and machine folder, the type is “Linux” and version is Debian(64 bit) if you’ve just downloaded Kali Linux 64bit version. Then, press Continue.
Choose your memory size for your virtual machine
Typically, 1GB RAM is fine for Linux. So I recommend you just choose 1GB is enough then press “continue”.
Tick on “Create a new virtual hard disk now” and press Create
Choose VDI “VirtualBox Disk Image” then press “Continue”
Next, click on “Dynamically Allocated” then press “Continue”
Next, choose file location and size
Install Kali Linux Mac
File location is where your virtual machine will be saved in. Default size for the virtual hard disk is 8GB, but I recommend it would be little more, 20GB is good. Then press “Create”.
Almost done, your virtual machine has been created
Now, click on the “Settings button” and go to “Storage” category
You should see something the same likes this screen.
On “Attributes” section, focus on Optical Drive. Choose the Kali file that you downloaded.
In my case, it’s kali-linux-2018.4-amd64.iso. Citrix workspace msi.
You should see this file I told above is under “Controller: IDE”
Kali Linux Virtualbox Windows 10
Then press OK.