SecTools.Org: Top 125 Network Security Tools

For more than a decade, the Nmap Project has been cataloguing the network security community's favorite tools. In 2011 this site became much more dynamic, offering ratings, reviews, searching, sorting, and a new tool suggestion form. This site allows open source and commercial tools on any platform, except those tools that we maintain (such as the Nmap Security Scanner, Ncat network connector, and Nping packet manipulator).

We're very impressed by the collective smarts of the security community and we highly recommend reading the whole list and investigating any tools you are unfamiliar with. Click any tool name for more details on that particular application, including the chance to read (and write) reviews. Many site elements are explained by tool tips if you hover your mouse over them. Enjoy!

4 tools

(1) ★★★★ Maltego (#34, new!)

Maltego is a forensics and data mining application. It is capable of querying various public data sources and graphically depicting the relationships between entities such as people, companies, web sites, and documents. Maltego is an open source intelligence too, but isn't open source software. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 3.0.3 on Jan. 17, 2011 (13 years, 10 months ago).

• • 
• • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
• • forensics

no rating Helix (#73, 21)

Helix is a Ubuntu live CD customized for computer forensics. Helix has been designed very carefully to not touch the host computer in any way and it is forensically sound. Helix will not auto mount swap space, or auto mount any attached devices. Helix also has a special Windows autorun side for Incident Response and Forensics. Downloading of the live CD is only provided as a complement to membership in the e-fense members-only forum. An unsupported, older, no-cost version is available as well. Read 1 review.

Latest release: version 2009R3 on Dec. 23, 2009 (14 years, 11 months ago).

• • 
• • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
• • forensics
  • sec-distros

(2) ★★★½ The Sleuth Kit (#101, new!)

The Sleuth Kit (previously known as TSK) is a collection of UNIX-based command line file and volume system forensic analysis tools. The file system tools allow you to examine file systems of a suspect computer in a non-intrusive fashion. Because the tools do not rely on the operating system to process the file systems, deleted and hidden content is shown. A graphical interface to the tools called Autopsy is available. Read 2 reviews.

Latest release: version 4.0.1 on Nov. 13, 2012 (12 years ago).

• • 
  • 
• • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
• • forensics

(1) ★★ EnCase (#120, new!)

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). Read 2 reviews.

Latest release: version 7.10.05 on March 18, 2015 (9 years, 8 months ago).

• • 
  • 
• • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
• • forensics

4 tools

Categories

• Antimalware (3)
• Application-specific scanners (3)
• Web browser–related (4)
• Encryption tools (8)
• Debuggers (5)
• Firewalls (2)
• Forensics (4)
• Fuzzers (4)
• General-purpose tools (8)
• Intrusion detection systems (6)
• Packet crafting tools (6)
• Password auditing (12)
• Port scanners (4)
• Rootkit detectors (5)
• Security-oriented operating systems (5)
• Packet sniffers (14)
• Vulnerability exploitation tools (11)
• Traffic monitoring tools (10)
• Vulnerability scanners (11)
• Web proxies (4)
• Web vulnerability scanners (20)
• Wireless tools (5)