Athena OS Distro focused on Cybersecurity - Penetration Testing Tools, ML and Linux Tutorials

superior_hosting_service

Dive into a new Pentesting Experience with Athena OS

Athena is a Arch Linux-based distro focused on Cybersecurity. Learn, practice and enjoy with any hacking tool! Born for InfoSec Professionals, Bug Bounty Hunters, Passionate Students and Spicy Hackers.

Download Link

https://github.com/Athena-OS/athena-iso/releases/tag/v22.11.15

Demo

Why Athena?

Pentesting: Athena can access to BlackArch repository, the biggest pentesting tool warehouse.
User-oriented: if Arch is born for experienced users, Athena is conceived for decreasing complexity and improving user experience.
Lightweight: Athena optimizes the disk space consumption by retrieving the tools you need only when you use them. Tools you never use won’t be stored and the space is only used for what you really need.
Performance: Athena is based on Arch Linux so it is configured to load the bare minimum for its purpose. No useless services, no useless modules consuming your resources.
Flexibility: for its Arch nature, Athena is flexible and can easily evolve to the new needs of the users.

Wiki

https://github.com/Athena-OS/athena-iso/wiki

Latest Updates

Here I would like to inform you about new features already tested and implemented that have been published in the newest release, for keeping you always informed in a comfortable way.

Athena OS, code name “Nike” (ancient Greek: “Victory”), comes with several important fixes and new implementations, and carries the new GNOME 43!

Athena Nike will provide:

Hacking roles: you can choose among several roles for your hacking activity:
- Bug Bounty Hunter
- Cracker
- Enthusiast Student
- Forensic Analyst
- Malware Analyst
- Mobile Analyst
- Network Analyst
- Red Teamer
- Web Pentester
Hacking environment variable viewer: you can easily list the set of environment variables you need for your activity
Autotiling feature: you can now tile windows by Autotiling icon on the top-right of the screen
osert tool: Markdown Templates for Offensive Security exam reports. Just get it by pacman!
BASH and ZSH as shells to be chosen
GRUB Athena background
A lot of security resources as bookmarks in Firefox ESR
Hack-Tools extension in Firefox ESR
CTRL+ALT+T for invoking the terminal, SUPER+D for minimizing all the windows, SUPER+E for opening the Home folder
Snapper for creating snapshots of your system for recovering purpose
Octopi as graphical package manager

Furthermore, heavy changes come at system level for improving the performance of the system:

Migration to GNOME 43
Firefox run on RAM for speeding up the performance
Parallel code compilation
Building from files in RAM
OOM handling
Process priority managers
- Ananicy
- IRQBalance
Improved kernel characteristics:
- Dirty Ratio
- Dirty Background Ratio
- OOM Dump Tasks
- OOM Kill Allocating Task
- Overcommit Memory
- Swappiness
- VFS Cache Pressure
- CFS zen tweaks for non-zen kernels

Remember, I left a small challenge for you inside the system! The tip is clear enough when you login…

Screenshots:

Known Third-Party Issues

VSCode does not show close, maximize and minimize buttons due to some bug related to Electron19. Bug already reported: microsoft/vscode#161586
- Workaround: sudo downgrade electron19 and select version 19.0.13. The issue will be solved on December when the new VSCode version will be released.
Evil-WinRM does not currently work in all Arch-based distros and produces the following output:

Error: An error of type OpenSSL::Digest::DigestError happened, message is Digest initialization failed: initialization error

Error: Exiting with code 1

Workaround: edit /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf by adding legacy = legacy_sect under default = default_sect in order to appear as:

[openssl_init]
providers = provider_sect

# List of providers to load
[provider_sect]
default = default_sect
legacy = legacy_sect

and by uncommenting #activate = 1 under [default_sect] and adding [legacy_sect] and activate = 1 under them in order to appear as:

[default_sect]
activate = 1
[legacy_sect]
activate = 1

Introduction

Athena is designed from scratch, so already during the development phase useless modules and services have been excluded in order to improve performance and resource consumption. Furthermore, this design approach allowed to review in detailed manner each single package and component to include inside the distribution. It led the OS to build a user-friendly environment, despite based on Arch Linux.

The heritage of Arch Linux impacts positively Athena OS:

Better performance: pacman is faster than apt
Focused: Athena can be developed and maintained down to the smallest detail
Much more security tools: Athena can rely on BlackArch repository, that contains much more security tools than APT repositories
Freedom: during the installation, you can configure your Athena with any resource or service you need.
Documentation: Arch Linux is very well documented on Internet for any need

Athena’s environment is based on GNOME Wayland that provide exciting features the user can enjoy!

Let’s give a detailed look on Athena!

System Requirements

Recommended system requirements for smooth usage in Athena are:

20 GB of hard disk space, SSD preferred
At least 4GB of RAM
Processor with at least two cores

Installation

Download the latest Athena release .iso file from the related section. According to your need, you can choose to install Athena on your computer natively, or implement it on a Virtual Machine (e.g., VMware or VirtualBox).

Currently VirtualBox is affected by a bug is enabling 3D Acceleration, so keep it disabled. 3D Acceleration also makes intermittent freezes on the environment if enabled on VMware or VirtualBox if you use xorg. It is strongly suggested to keep it disabled.

When you mount the ISO to your pendrive or your Virtual Machine and boot up Athena, you will meet Athena Calamares Installer, that allows you to customise your future Athena OS as you wish.

Configuration

Latest Release

After the installation and the first boot:

open Kitty terminal, run htb-update and copy and paste your Hack The Box API key.

The Hack The Box API Key can be retrieved by your Hack The Box profile settings -> “Create App Token”.

Until your API key will be valid, your system will update the Hack The Box contents automatically for you at each login or when htb-update is run.

Resources

PenTOXIC Menu

PenTOXIC Menu is born for organizing in pretty manner all main security tools you need to start your hacking activity. It consists in two levels:

1st level containing the several hacking categories as submenu, plus Firefox browser and Code OSS as editor
2nd level consisting in the hacking tools deployed for each category

PenTOXIC changes its look according to the applied theme!

The list of the PenTOXIC menu, also deployable by Red Team Button, is:

Information Gathering	Dmitry	Nmap	Spiderfoot	TheHarvester	enum4linux	wafw00f	Fierce
Vulnerability Analysis	Legion	Nikto	unix-privesc-check
Web Application Analysis	WPScan	Burpsuite	dirb	dirbuster	ffuf	Wfuzz	sqlmap
Password Attacks	John	Hashcat	Hydra	CEWL	CRUNCH	RSMangler	Medusa
Sniffing	mitmproxy	Responder	Wireshark
Wireless Testing	Aircrack-ng	Kismet	Reaver	Wifite	Fern Wifi Cracker	Spooftooph
Reverse Engineering	NASM	Radare2
Exploitation	SearchSploit	Metasploit	SEToolkit
Post Exploitation	PowerSploit	Mimikatz	evil-winrm	proxychains-ng	weevely

PWNage Menu

PWNage Menu allows you to access quickly to the main hacking platforms for learning purposes and to join the main Discord InfoSec Communities:

1st shell deploys all quick links to the main hacking platforms
2nd shell can be accessed by the Discurity icon on top where the user has the opportunity to join several Discord InfoSec servers or open Discord App.

Hack The Box Integration

Cannot you wait for opening browser and accessing to Hack The Box website? Athena gives you the possibility to play Hack The Box machines directly on your Operating System environment in a quick and comfortable manner. Athena offers:

Connect/Disconnect to/from Hack The Box VPN servers
Play any active free machine you wish
Reset the active machine
Stop any active machine
Submit a flag and write a review about your hacking experience!
… and of course you can access to the Hack The Box website in one click

For playing Active HTB Machines, use PWNage Menu. For playing Retired Machines, just run htb-play and type the name of the machine you want to play.

Firefox ESR Hack Mode

Firefox ESR has been modified in order to integrate at the installation time the addons you need for your web application pentesting activity. The preinstalled addons are:

Cookie Quick Manager
Dark Reader
FoxyProxy Standard
HacKontext
HTTPS Everywhere
Privacy
uBlock Origin
Wappalyzer

Payload to Dock

Payload to Dock is based on Dash 2 Dock and keeps the access to the most famous payload repositories. It allows you to get the latest version of payloads and accessing their path directly by the shell. It shows:

Auto Wordlists
FuzzDB
PayloadAllTheThings
SecLists
Security Wordlist

The Dock contains also links to Mimikatz and Powersploit.

BlackArch Repository

BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based penetration testing distribution for penetration testers and security researchers. Its repository contains 2800+ tools, classified for categories. You can install tools individually or in groups according to the categories they belong. BlackArch Repository is compatible with only Arch-based distributions as Athena OS.

NIST Feed

NIST Feed is a special tool able to inform you as soon as possible about a new published or updated CVE by a popup notification! The notification contains a description of the CVE. Are you curious about it and would like to access to details? Left-click on it and you will be redirected to the official NIST NVD page for further details. Do you want to quickly close the popup notification? Right-click on it!

You can decide which kind of CVE you wish to be informed about, for example CVEs with an high impact on the confidentiality and integrity, or CRITICAL CVEs.

Just execute:

nist-feed -h

for getting more details.

Be aware of new vulnerabilities by NIST Feed!

Shortcuts

Keybindings in Athena OS for speeding up your work.

Keybind	Description
`CTRL+SPACE`	PenTOXIC menu
`CTRL+TAB`	PWNage menu
`Super`	Multi-desktop environment
`Super+Super`	Switch between desktop and “Show Applications” menu
`Super+L`	Screen Lock

Note that Super key corresponds to the button showing Windows icon in the usual keyboards.

Shell

Environment Variable	Value
$PAYLOADS	`/usr/share/payloads`
$AUTOWORDLISTS	`/usr/share/payloads/Auto_Wordlists`
$FUZZDB	`/usr/share/payloads/FuzzDB`
$PAYLOADSALLTHETHINGS	`/usr/share/payloads/PayloadsAllTheThings`
$SECLISTS	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists`
$SECURITYWORDLIST	`/usr/share/payloads/Security-Wordlist`
$MIMIKATZ	`/usr/share/windows/mimikatz`
$POWERSPLOIT	`/usr/share/windows/powersploit`
$ROCKYOU	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Passwords/Leaked-Databases/rockyou.txt`
$DIRBIG	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-big.txt`
$DIRMEDIUM	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt`
$DIRSMALL	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-small.txt`
$WEBAPI_COMMON	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/api/api-endpoints.txt`
$WEBAPI_MAZEN	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common-api-endpoints-mazen160.txt`
$WEBCOMMON	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common.txt`
$WEBPARAM	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/burp-parameter-names.txt`

tmux

Environment Variable	Value
$PAYLOADS	`/usr/share/payloads`
$AUTOWORDLISTS	`/usr/share/payloads/Auto_Wordlists`
$FUZZDB	`/usr/share/payloads/FuzzDB`
$PAYLOADSALLTHETHINGS	`/usr/share/payloads/PayloadsAllTheThings`
$SECLISTS	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists`
$SECURITYWORDLIST	`/usr/share/payloads/Security-Wordlist`
$MIMIKATZ	`/usr/share/windows/mimikatz`
$POWERSPLOIT	`/usr/share/windows/powersploit`
$ROCKYOU	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Passwords/Leaked-Databases/rockyou.txt`
$DIRBIG	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-big.txt`
$DIRMEDIUM	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt`
$DIRSMALL	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-small.txt`
$WEBAPI_COMMON	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/api/api-endpoints.txt`
$WEBAPI_MAZEN	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common-api-endpoints-mazen160.txt`
$WEBCOMMON	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/common.txt`
$WEBPARAM	`/usr/share/payloads/SecLists/Discovery/Web-Content/burp-parameter-names.txt`

Utility Commands

Command	Description
`athena-theme-tweak`	Switch to different Athena themes.
`athena-welcome`	Welcome application that allows main security tools installation and mirrorlist update.
`bashtop`	Resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes.
`bat`	A `cat` clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
`bfetch`	SuperB general-purpose fetch displayer.
`code`	Core engine of Visual Studio Code.
`commentor`	Extract all comments from the specified URL resource.
`eog`	Image viewer.
`fish`	A smart and user-friendly command line shell.
`git`	Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system.
`gnome-extensions`	Gnome Extension manager.
`gnome-tweaks`	Configure looks and functionality of your desktop.
`htb-play`	Select any Hack The Box you want to play.
`kitty`	The fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal emulator.
`la`	An `lsd -a` alias.
`ll`	An `lsd -alFh` alias.
`lsd`	An `ls` command with a lot of pretty colors and some other stuff.
`nano`	Simple terminal-based text editor.
`nautilus`	File Manager.
`neofetch`	CLI system information tool written in BASH.
`pacman`	Arch Linux package manager.
`paru`	Pacman wrapping AUR helper with lots of features and minimal interaction.
`tmux`	Terminal multiplexer that allow you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them and reattach them to a different terminal.
`tree`	Recursive directory listing program that produces a depth indented listing of files.
`vim`	Highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient.
`xcp`	An extended `cp` command.
`z`	A smarter `cd` command for your terminal.

Vim configuration is based on https://github.com/amix/vimrc so it implements smart and useful plugins, color schemes and modes.

If you would like to enable, edit or disable Burn My Window opening and closing effect:

gnome-extensions prefs burn-my-windows@schneegans.github.com

and check or uncheck your effects.

Change your themes and icons by gnome-tweaks.

Funny Commands

Command	Description
`cmatrix`	Scrolling Matrix like screen in the terminal.
`cowsay`	Generate an ASCII picture of a cow saying something provided by the user.
`devil`	Quotes by devil eyes.
`figlet`	Print input using large characters made up of ordinary screen characters.
`fortune`	Print a random, hopefully interesting, adage.
`lolcat`	Concatenate files, or standard input, to standard output, and add rainbow coloring to it.
`myman`	Text-mode Pac-Man.
`nyancat`	Animated, color, ANSI-text program that renders a loop of the classic Nyan Cat animation.
`toilet`	Print text using large characters made of smaller characters.
`train`	Choo-choo!

Screenshots

Roadmap

Ongoing implementation of different themes that can be chosen at time of the installation
Integration between ExploitDB and NIST Feed
Athena Docker Container
Implementation of Blue Team tools

Support

If you detect any issues during your experience, please open an issue on athena-iso GitHub repository. Current troubleshooting:

After the first login of Discord App, at the next access on the application, if it freezes during the starting, reboot the system and the issue will be fixed.
During the installation or usage, if you are getting issues related to the blackarch.db retrieving packages or keys, check for any firewall your traffic is routed through and whitelist blackarch.org.
AkameGaKill theme cannot apply red theme for legacy windows due to GTK 4.0 files missing.
Visual Code does not show close, maximize and minimize buttons due to a bug in Electron19 19.1.4.

Publications

PenTest Magazine: https://pentestmag.com/product/pentest-open-source-pentesting-toolkit/

Credits

ArcoLinux Project: Resources and Learning materials
Calamares Team: Calamares Installer
Simon Schneegans: Fly-Pie menu and Burn My Window extensions
HackTheBox: Bash and PowerShell icons; Hack The Box icon
Offensive Security: Kali Linux security tools icons; Offensive Security icon
Kitsunekun: Athena Chibi Logo
Red Team Village: PWNage menu icon

The Athena OS is a github repository by Athena-OS

Source from

Awesome Forensics