Its been a while since I have posted about some hacking tools and with increasing number of emails asking
 me to do an  article on it, I finally decided to cover it up.Hacking tools are developed by some really good
 coders out there to ease out many complex tasks which have to be done manually and took painstakingly 
great deal of time and effort.All these tools provided here are free of cost,are tried hands on and are being
 actively developed by community,and if not,their alternatives are provided.To summarize it up, these are 
the 7 must have tools for every hacker out there.
7 Must Have Tools For Every Hacker





1. Nmap 
I think everyone has heard of this one, Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free open source utility for network 
exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine 
against single hosts.Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network
 inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP 
packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services
 (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions)
 they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use,and dozens of other characteristics. It may be 
used to discover computers and services on a computer network, thus creating a “map” of the network.Nmap
 runs on most types of computers and both console and graphical versions are available. Nmap is free and
open source.Can be used by beginners (-sT) or by pros alike (packet_trace). A very versatile tool, once you
 fully understand the results.



2. Nessus Remote Security Scanner 
Recently went closed source, but is still essentially free. Works with a client-server framework.Nessus is the worlds most popular vulnerability scanner used in over 75,000 organizations world-wide. Many of the worlds 
largest organizations are realizing significant cost savings by using Nessus to audit business-
critical enterprise devices and applications.



3. Wireshark 
Wireshark is a GTK+-based  network protocol analyzer, or sniffer, that lets you capture and interactively browse
 the contents of network frames. The goal of the project is to create a commercial-quality analyzer for Unix and 
to give Wireshark features that are missing from closed-source sniffers. Works great on both Linux and
 Windows (with a GUI), easy to use and can reconstruct TCP/IPStreams! .


4. Cain and Abel 
The swiss knife of hacking tools..Cain & Abel is a password recovery tool for Microsoft Operating Systems. 
It allows easy recovery of various kind of passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords 
using Dictionary, Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analyzing routing protocols.
The program does not exploit any software vulnerabilities or bugs that could not be fixed with little effort.
5. Kismet 
Kismet is an 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet will work with  any wireless card which supports raw monitoring (rfmon) mode, and can sniff 802.11b, 802.11a,
 and 802.11g traffic. A good wireless tool as long as your card supports rfmon


6. NetStumbler
Yes a decent wireless tool for Windows! Sadly not as powerful as it’s Linux counterparts, but it’s easy to use
 and has a nice interface, good for the basics of war-driving. NetStumbler is a tool for Windows that allows you
 to detect Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g. It has many uses:
  1. Verify that your network is set up the way you intended.
  2. Find locations with poor coverage in your WLAN.
  3. Detect other networks that may be causing interference on your network.
  4. Detect unauthorized rogue access points in your workplace.
  5. Help aim directional antennas for long-haul WLAN links.
  6. Use it recreationally for WarDriving.

7. SuperScan
Powerful TCP port scanner, pinger, resolver. SuperScan 4 is an update of the highly popular Windows port 
scanning tool, SuperScan. If you need an alternative for nmap on Windows with a decent interface, I suggest
 you check this out, it’s pretty nice.
Alternatively, you can try Angry IP Scanner which is a pretty good replacement for it