I have yet to decide which platform I want to use for security testing.  I just rebuilt my Macbook since I no longer need it for work.  I have the following apps installed on it and not sure if I should any any others, I figure I could also toss on a VM or 2 for other applications (Backtrack).

KisMAC
Wireshark
NMAP 5.21
Nessus

Any other suggestions would be welcomed.  So what do the rest of you use?

No preferred platform here, I use whatever fits best and does the job. All platforms (and programs) have their pros and cons, so personally I see no reason why to limit myself only to one.
If you are more interested in the programs rather than a platform you might find the Top 100 Network Security Tools-list interesting. There it's also noted for which platform the tools are available and thereupon you could choose a particular platform if that's what you want.

you got the basic tooling covered (except for netcat! dont forget about netcat!). i could recommend to install 2 different versions of tooling for each job, to filter out false positives/negatives. to give a example:

use NMAP and unicornscan.

this way you get some sort of confirmation of the information found and possibly some differences (which you should double check with another tool) that could make or break your pentest.

I'll also second the netbook. I purchased a EEE-PC 900HA a couple years back, scrapped the XP Installation and installed BackTrack. It runs BackTrack 3 & 4 pretty seemlessly - Love it  I believe the 1000 series models run it well too.

I have an HP Mini 1000 myself.   I am very happy with it, especially after upgrading the RAM to 2GB.   The only thing I should have done differently is purchased one with HP's Linux distro.   I would have saved $50.  I wouldn't have used their distro and would have still used Ubuntu, but I would have enjoyed another two cases of beer or so.

@Chrisj


Have you looked at SANS Investigative Forensic Toolkit (SIFT) Workstation: Version 2.0 ISO https://computer-forensics2.sans.org/community/downloads/

I'm pretty sure that the basis of the image on those Lenovo Ideapad s10 they hand out.

What90

No I haven't. I know some of the tools were built for the forensic puzzles, and folded in. Some of them are really nice scripts. Nothing I can't do by hand, but automation makes it nicer.

I'm also using the same netbook.  Unfortunately i'm unable to get the wireless drivers\card to work.  How did you manage it.

I've tried
update-rc.d wicd defaults
/etc/init.d/wicd start

before running startx but it doesn't pickup any wireless card.