When it comes to penetration testing, a lot of white hats tend to lean a bit gray. Their entire job is to test security measures with the goal of improving them, but that requires an ability to think like a black hat. From an outsider’s perspective, pentesters tend to look indistinguishable from black hats. Redditor grymoire certainly inhabited that persona when he built this Kali Linux pentesting setup hidden inside a “book.”
Kali is a Debian-based Linux distro designed specifically for penetration testing. While one can install the tools on any Debian distro to create an equally capable pentesting system, Kali comes with all of those tools built-in and is locked-down by default for security. Over the last few years, Kali has become a favorite of pentesters. And because it is a Debian-based distro, it runs well on single-board computers with ARM processors.
In this case, that is the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer. It’s paired with a Pimoroni Hyperpixel 4.0″ TFT LCD touchscreen and a Solder Party BlackBerry Q20 keyboard with built-in trackpad. That is a full QWERTY tactile keyboard with a breakout board that provides connectivity options, including the USB connection used here. A small USB hub provides USB-A connections, since the Raspberry Pi only has micro USB ports.
All of that hardware fits inside of a book called Supermind by Mark Phillips. Except it isn’t actually a book. It’s a hollow wood box that looks like a book. We can only imagine that grymoire feels like a spy any time he pulls this book off a shelf and open it up to reveal their pentesting rig.
