Introduction

Kali is a very well known Linux distribution that comes with the most important penetration tools. Kali is a fundamental Linux distribution to learn and in this blog post, we recommend the best books for learning penetration skills using Kali. We will recommend 10 books, the first three are fundamental to learn Kali Linux and pentesting skills. After reading those books it will help you to advance from intermediate to advance pentester. If you are looking how to improve as a pentester, check if you already read these books. We also include a book that covers Kali as an operating system and some books that the topic is not kali, but some frameworks like metasploit.

For a beginner, it might be a little difficult to grasp this operating system, because of lack of proper guide but you can easily learn from books that provides you with a path to learn.

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing

Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing is a book that cover lot of security topics. The book covers the phases of recon and information gathering, which are vital for any successful attack are shown here quite nicely. has an overview of most famous tools such as Nmap, Metasploit framework, recon-ng framework is given to help readers know and explore these tools.

This book can prove to be a very useful resource to anyone who is interested in information security / Penetration Testing, Security Professional for sharpening their skills. Also, for System Administrators / IT managers this book can benefit them as they will know the possible attack vectors and patch them if they find before a 'Black Hat' does.

Metasploit Bootcamp: The fastest way to learn Metasploit

Metasploit Bootcamp is a book all about the metasploit framework and not about Kali, but metasploit is a tool you must learn. Kali comes with metasploit installed and this is one of the most important tools used by hackers. Metasploit Bootcamp is a book that will help to to learn from the beggining eerything about this amazing framework.

The Hacker Playbook 3: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing

The Hacker Playbook 3 is not about kali in particular, but we recommend this cybersecurity book since it contains a different approach than the rest. A lot of books go over theory, but few actually walk the walk and detail how to pull off the techniques. The author explains techniques in simple-to-understand concepts while backing them up with real-life code. You can choose to read with broad strokes to understand the techniques, and/or get granular with the code to execute the techniques.

The 3rd edition contains VMS to practice some of the newer web attacks. You will find attacks to nodejs templating, NoSQL injections, advanced XSS, XXE, deserialization and more.

Hacking: How to Hack, Penetration testing Hacking Book manuscripts

The focal point of Hacking: Hacking: How to Hack will be to present a portion of the best-understood programming that you can use for gratis, besides where to discover them, how to get to them, lastly, in each section, you will discover showed illustrations well ordered, on programmer devices. The discourses and execution illustrations will give you how to utilize hacking apparatuses, as well as how to wind up a Man in the Middle in different ways.

If you were always interested and wanted to learn more about hacking. The formatting and flow of the book were very helpful and simple to understand. Some terminology could be hard to understand, but the author did a good job of explaining different techniques and walking you through what you need to know.

This book assumes you're serious and wants to take you there, providing a CD to practice with and everything

Cookbook: Effective penetration testing solutions

The Kali Linux Cookbook - Effective penetration testing solutions is a very useful book and it was written in a way to skip to what just interests you. The book is very easy to read and provides examples to help you learn. We tested the scripts and we couldn't find any error on them. While this book is not a tutorial, it could be very handy when you need to solve a certain problem and it will teach you with good practices on how to use the tools.

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook - Second Edition

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook - Second Edition is a fantastic book for both those new to pen testing and those with some experience looking to round out their skills. The authors wisely chose Python for many of the examples, which is a very readable language that is easy to pick up. If you have any experience in Python, the examples are very straightforward, and if you don't, they're a good way to get some experience. The book is also great at providing enough theory that you understand the fundamentals while not overwhelming you with it. It often accomplishes this by explaining the theory and following it with a practical, and usually fun, example, like scanning your network for other devices. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about pen testing and computer security - it's well worth the investment.

Computer Hacking Beginners Guide: How to Hack Wireless Network, Basic Security and Penetration Testing, Kali Linux, Your First Hack

The book Computer Hacking Beginners Guide will tech you about terms and language surrounding “hacking” in general, icluding Black Hat, Grey Hat and White Hat hacking and what the differences are. This is a great beginner book for anyone who is curious, wants to know more, and wants to defend themselves. You are going to know a lot more about the exact tools and steps you will need for either ethical or non-ethical hacking with this book. This book focuses on Kali.

Hacking: The Underground Guide to Computer Hacking, Including Wireless Networks, Security, Windows, Kali Linux and Penetration Testing

Hacking: The Underground Guide is also a book not with the main focus on Kali, but a really good book to read. This is a more informative book and for more general audience. However it covers a lot of concepts and it can be read by people by almost no knowlegde about hacking.

Rtfm: Blue Team Field Manual

Rtfm: Red Team Field Manual book is essentially a decade's worth of notes from an experienced network security engineer or pen tester. This is a good reference for those who don't use these tools on a regular basis. This is a reference book that already presumes you know what you're doing with penetration testing and tools related to that. It's not going to teach you what to do or how to use various tools, but what it will do is be a handy, organized place to lookup a command that you may have forgotten how to use.

Every penetration tester should have a copy of this book; then transcribe it to your Evernote, as every page is essentially what you'll be referencing on a daily basis when you forgot that one command for that one thing you need.

Kali Linux Revealed: Mastering the Penetration Testing Distribution

Kali Linux Revealed is a book that covers how to install Kali Linux and how to deploy it in an enterprise environment. This is not a hacking book. You won't learn about pen testing or Metasploit. This book teaches you how to master the operating system, how to manage it, how to secure it and how to deploy it. This book is more about learning Linux than anything else, but it is tailored to the Kali OS as opposed to generic Debian Linux. If you want to learn about Kali and how powerful it is outside of the pentesting features, this is the book for you. The information within is very useful. Remember this book is not about pentesting.