Security | Knowledgebase

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For detailed guides, see the main ArchWiki page, Security.

Network security

See also .

airgeddon — Multi-use bash script to audit wireless networks

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— Tool that monitors ethernet activity and keeps a database of Ethernet/IP address pairings.

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bettercap — Swiss army knife for network attacks and monitoring.

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darkstat — Captures network traffic, calculates statistics about usage, and serves reports over HTTP.

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— Collection of tools for network auditing and penetration testing.

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— Graphical network monitor for Unix modeled after etherman. Featuring link layer, IP and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.

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GNOME Network Tools — GNOME interface for various networking tools.

Honeyd — Tool that allows the user to set up and run multiple virtual hosts on a computer network.

hping — Command-line oriented TCP/IP packet assembler/analyzer.

IPTraf — Console-based network monitoring utility.

jnettop — top-like console network traffic visualizer.

Kismet — 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system.

LinSSID — Graphical wireless scanner.

Nemesis — Command-line network packet crafting and injection utility.

Net Activity Viewer — Graphical network connections viewer, similar in functionality with Netstat.

Nmap — Security scanner used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" of the network.

Ntop — Network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes.

pyNeighborhood — GTK-based SMB/CIFS browsing utility.

Smb4K — Advanced network neighborhood browser and Samba share mounting utility for KDE.

Snort — Network intrusion prevention and detection system.

Spectools — A set of utilities for spectrum analyzer hardware including Wi-Spy devices.

Sshguard — Daemon that protects SSH and other services against brute-force attacks, similar to Fail2ban.

Suricata — High performance Network IDS, IPS and Network Security Monitoring engine.

Tcpdump — Common console-based packet analyzer that allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network.

vnStat — Console-based network traffic monitor that keeps a log of network traffic for the selected interfaces.

What IP — Small GTK application to get info on your IP.

Wireshark — Network protocol analyzer that lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

Zeek — Powerful network analysis framework that is much different from the typical IDS you may know.

Firewall management

See iptables#Front-ends.

Threat and vulnerability detection

AFICK — Security tool that allows to monitor the changes on your file systems, and so can detect intrusions.

Metasploit Framework — An advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code.

Nessus — Comprehensive vulnerability scanning program.

OpenVAS — Framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. FOSS Nessus fork.

OSSEC — Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System that performs log analysis, file integrity checking, policy monitoring, rootkit detection, real-time alerting and active response.

Samhain — Host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) provides file integrity checking and log file monitoring/analysis, as well as rootkit detection, port monitoring, detection of rogue SUID executables, and hidden processes.

File security

AIDE — File and directory integrity checker.

Logwatch — Customizable log analysis system.

Anti malware

ClamAV — Open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats.

ClamTk — Graphical front-end for ClamAV using Perl and Gtk libraries. It is designed to be an easy-to-use, lightweight, on-demand antivirus scanner for Linux systems.

Linux Malware Detect — Malware scanner designed around the threats faced in shared hosted environments.

Rootkit Hunter — Checks machines for the presence of rootkits and other unwanted tools.

Hostsblock — A script that downloads, sorts, and compiles multiple ad- and malware-blocking hosts files.

Screen lockers

See also Session lock.

Warning: Only sflock, physlock, Cinnamon Screensaver, MATE Screensaver and GNOME Screensaver are able to block tty access. See Xorg#Block TTY access on how to manually block tty access.

betterlockscreen — i3lock-color wrapper. Betterlockscreen allows you to cache images with different filters and lockscreen with blazing speed.

Cinnamon Screensaver — Screen locker for the Cinnamon desktop.

Deepin Screensaver — A lightweight Qt5 based screensaver.

GNOME Screensaver — Legacy screen locker for the GNOME desktop. Unmaintained since 2012.

i3lock — A simple screen locker. Provides user feedback and uses PAM authentication. The background can be set to an image or solid color.

i3lock-blur — Fork of i3lock which can use your desktop with the blur effect applied as a background.

i3lock-color — Fork of i3lock with color and positioning configuration support and can use your desktop with the blur effect applied as a background.

Light-locker — A simple locker (forked from gnome-screensaver) that aims to have simple, sane, secure defaults and be well integrated with the desktop while not carrying any desktop-specific dependencies. It relies on LightDM for locking and unlocking your session via ConsoleKit/UPower or logind/systemd.

MATE Screensaver — Screensaver and locker for MATE Desktop Environment.

physlock — Screen and console locker.

sflock — Simple screen locker utility for X, based on slock. Provides a very basic user feedback.

slock — Very simple and lightweight X screen locker. Offers only a black background when locked, there are no animations or text fields.

tsscreenlock — Screen locker used in theShell. Shows music controls, and if used with theShell, also shows desktop notifications.

xfce4-screensaver — A screen saver and locker that aims to have simple, sane, secure defaults and be well integrated with the xfce desktop.

xlockmore — Simple X11 screen lock with PAM support.

XScreenSaver — Screen saver and locker for the X Window System.

XSecureLock — X11 screen lock utility designed with the primary goal of security.

xtrlock — Very lightweight X display locker. Keeps windows visible and displays lock icon instead of mouse cursor. Typing password followed by enter unlocks the screen.

Password auditing

Hashcat — Multithreaded advanced password recovery utility.

Password managers

Console

1password CLI — Proprietary command line tool for 1Password password manager.

Bitwarden — Open source password manager with desktop, mobile, browser, and CLI versions. Cloud or self-hosted.

gopass — Advanced console based password manager, supporting GnuPG and other backends.

Himitsu — Secret storage manager.

KeePassC — Curses-based password manager compatible to KeePass v.1.x.

LastPass — Hosted password manager.

pass — Simple console-based password manager featuring flat text file organization and GnuPG encryption.

pwsafe — Unix command-line program that manages encrypted password databases.

spm — Simple Password Manager written entirely in POSIX shell using PGP. Fast, lightweight and easily scriptable.

tpm — Tiny password manager, inspired by pass, written entirely in POSIX shell.

Vault — A tool for managing secrets.

Ylva — Command-line password manager, written in C, uses OpenSSL.

Graphical

Authenticator — Open source, two-factor authentication application built for GNOME.

Bitwarden — Open source password manager with desktop, mobile, browser, and CLI versions. Cloud or self-hosted.

GNOME Password Safe — Password manager for GNOME which makes use of the KeePass v.4 format.

Ked Password Manager — A password manager that helps to manage large numbers of passwords.

KeePass Password Safe — Mono-based password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way.

KeePassX — Qt-based password manager. Compatible with KeePass v.1.x and KeePass v.2.x.

KeePassXC — Community fork of KeePassX with more active development. Compatible with KeePass v.1.x (import only) and KeePass v.2.x.

Keysmith — OTP generation software by KDE.

KDE Wallet Manager — Tool to manage the passwords on your system. By using the KDE wallet subsystem, it not only allows you to keep your own secrets but also to access and manage the passwords of every application that integrates with the wallet.

OTPClient — Highly secure and easy to use GTK software for two-factor authentication that supports both Time-based One-time Passwords (TOTP) and HMAC-Based One-Time Passwords (HOTP).

Passbook — Modern password manager for GNOME.

Password Gorilla — A cross-platform password manager.

Password Safe — Simple and secure password manager.

QPass — Easy to use password manager with built-in password generator.

QtPass — GUI for pass, the standard unix password manager.

Revelation — Password manager for the GNOME desktop.

Universal Password Manager — Allows you to store usernames, passwords, URLs and generic notes in an encrypted database protected by one master password.

Cryptography

Hash checkers

cfv — Tiny utility to both test and create checksum files, support .sfv, .csv, .crc, .md5, md5sum, sha1sum, .torrent, par, and .par2 files.

GtkHash — A GTK utility for computing message digests or checksums

hashdeep — A cross-platform tools to compute hashes, or message digests, for any number of files

Quick Hash GUI — A GUI to enable the rapid selection and subsequent hashing of files (individually or recursively throughout a folder structure) text and (on Linux) disks.

RHash — Utility for verifying hash sums (SFV, CRC, etc). Supports lots of algorithms.

MassHash — A set of file hashing tools (both CLI and GTK GUI) written in Python. Supported algorithms include MD5, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512.

Parchive — Utility which creates and uses PAR2 files to detect damage in data files and repair them if necessary.

Encryption, signing, steganography

age — A simple, modern and secure encryption tool (and library) with small explicit keys, no config options, and UNIX-style composability.

GNOME Keysign — GTK/GNOME application to use GnuPG for signing other people's keys. Quickly, easily, and securely.

GnuPG — The GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880. Free and Open Source replacement of PGP, mostly used for digital signing of packages.

GPG-Crypter — Graphical front-end to GnuPG(GPG) using the GTK3 toolkit and GPGME library.

KeePassXC — Mainly used for password management and generation, but also supports attaching arbitrary files to entries in an encrypted database.

Keybase — Key directory mapping social media identities, with cross platform encrypted chat, cloud storage, and git repositories.

Kleopatra — Certificate Manager and Unified Crypto GUI for KDE. It supports managing X.509 and OpenPGP certificates in the GpgSM keybox and retrieving certificates from LDAP servers.

minisign — Simple program that only implements key signing

OpenSSH — De facto SSH implementation that supports message signing

passphrase2pgp — Reproducibly generate private key in OpenPGP/OpenSSH formats accroding to user input passphrase and optionally sign message in one go

scrypt — Command-line encryption utility featuring the memory-hardened scrypt key derivation function.

steghide — A steganography utility that is able to hide data in various kinds of image and audio files.

Data-at-rest encryption

See Data-at-rest encryption.

Privilege elevation

doas — A portable version of OpenBSD's doas command, known for being substantially smaller in size compared to sudo.

su — Command used to assume the identity of another user on the system.

sudo — Command to delegate the ability to run commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail.