Kali Linux has released version 2025.4 on December 12, 2025, marking its final update of the year. The release introduces three new hacking tools, significant desktop environment improvements, and enhanced support for Kali NetHunter. It focuses on modernizing the user experience for cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers.
Kali Linux 2025.4, released on December 12, 2025, brings several enhancements tailored for penetration testing and security assessments. This distribution, designed for red-teaming, network research, and ethical hacking, now supports a wide range of hardware, including Raspberry Pi and Android devices via Kali NetHunter.
The update includes three new tools: bpf-linker, a simple BPF static linker for eBPF-based security tooling; evil-winrm-py, a Python-based implementation for executing commands on remote Windows machines via WinRM, supporting NTLM, Pass-the-Hash, certificate-based authentication, and Kerberos; and hexstrike-ai, an MCP server enabling AI agents to autonomously run security tools.
Desktop environments see major upgrades. GNOME 49 becomes Wayland-only, removing X11 support, with refreshed themes, the Showtime video player replacing Totem, reorganized tool folders in the app grid, and a new terminal shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+T or Win+T). As noted in the announcement, "Another quality-of-life improvement is the addition of a shortcut to quickly open a terminal (finally!), using Ctrl+Alt+T or Win+T - just like in our other desktops."
KDE Plasma updates to 6.5, featuring improved window tiling, an enhanced screenshot tool with editing features, quick clipboard access, and fuzzy search in KRunner. Xfce gains comprehensive color theme support for icons, GTK windows, and the window manager.
Full Wayland support extends to virtual machines, including VirtualBox, VMware, and QEMU, with clipboard sharing and scaling. The kernel upgrades to 6.16 for performance gains.
Kali NetHunter expands Android 16 support for Samsung Galaxy S10 series (S10, S10e, S10+, S10 5G) on LineageOS 23, OnePlus Nord, and Android 15 for Xiaomi Mi 9. The Terminal app is restored for Magisk compatibility, preventing session closures on Ctrl+C. A preview of Wifipumpkin3, a rogue access point framework for Evil Twin attacks and phishing (templates for Facebook, Instagram, iCloud, Snapchat), is now in the NetHunter app.
The Kali Live image, now 4.7GB, is available only via BitTorrent. New mirrors in Asia (India, South Korea) and North America improve downloads. Existing installations can upgrade using standard package commands.
