Open-source alternatives to Pacu

The framework is a comprehensive penetration testing platform designed for the development, testing, and execution of security exploits. It serves as a research toolkit and automated assessment environment, enabling security professionals to identify and validate vulnerabilities within networked systems and infrastructure through repeatable, standardized procedures. The platform distinguishes itself through a modular architecture that supports reflective payload injection, allowing for the execution of code directly in memory without writing to disk. It utilizes an asynchronous event loop to

OffensiveNim is a red teaming framework and post-exploitation toolkit developed in Nim. It provides a collection of low-level primitives and a Windows API wrapper designed for offensive security operations, including malware development and shellcode loading. The project focuses on evasion and obfuscation through techniques such as API unhooking, direct system calls, and anti-debugging mechanisms. It features diverse payload delivery methods, including reflective binary loading, the execution of .NET assemblies via CLR hosting, and various shellcode injection techniques using fibers, COM obje

w3af is a web penetration testing suite and security audit framework designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in web applications. It functions as a vulnerability scanner that crawls targets to find injection points and a fuzzer used to discover hidden endpoints and test input validation. The project distinguishes itself by providing an intercepting HTTP proxy for capturing and modifying traffic, combined with a knowledge-base driven exploitation system. It enables the execution of security exploits to gain remote shell access and supports post-exploitation activities, such as routing

Ladon is an internal network penetration scanner and vulnerability assessment tool designed to identify high-risk security flaws and assets across network segments. It operates as a fileless security scanner, executing its engine and modules directly in memory to avoid leaving a disk footprint on target systems. The project is distinguished by its integration as a plugin for command beacons, specifically within the Cobalt Strike framework. This allows for memory-resident network discovery and vulnerability detection. It further supports stealth operations through payload and script obfuscatio

S3Scanner is a security tool for auditing public access and misconfigured permissions across S3-compatible storage providers. It functions as a storage auditor and security scanner designed to identify open buckets, enumerate publicly accessible objects, and exfiltrate data from misconfigured cloud environments. The project is distinguished by its integration with message brokers, allowing it to consume target lists for large-scale cloud infrastructure audits. It also provides utilities for dumping the entire contents of misconfigured buckets to local directories and calculating the total siz

CloudPentestCheatsheets is a knowledge base and curated set of technical instructions for executing penetration tests on cloud-native architecture. It serves as a security audit guide and cheat sheet for auditing security and identifying misconfigurations across major cloud environments. The project provides structured materials for performing cloud penetration testing, security auditing, and asset enumeration. These resources are organized to support multi-cloud security assessments through the evaluation of offensive security postures across various cloud service providers. The technical g

TheFatRat is a security exploitation framework designed to automate the creation, obfuscation, and deployment of payloads for penetration testing. It functions as a comprehensive toolkit that streamlines the exploitation lifecycle, enabling users to generate malicious executables, manage network listeners, and execute post-exploitation tasks through a unified command-line interface. The framework distinguishes itself by integrating various third-party exploitation utilities into a single, orchestrated workflow. It provides specialized capabilities for embedding code into legitimate binaries a

Bjorn is a penetration testing framework that automates network scanning, credential brute-forcing, vulnerability assessment, and data exfiltration, all coordinated through an event-driven task pipeline and controlled via a web-based dashboard. Its modular plugin architecture allows independent security modules to be loaded and chained together, with an asynchronous network scanner discovering live hosts and open ports without blocking the main execution flow. The framework distinguishes itself by integrating a credential brute-force engine that systematically attempts login combinations agai

The Social-Engineer Toolkit is a social engineering framework and penetration testing suite designed to simulate human-centric security attacks. It serves as a phishing simulation tool and credential harvesting utility to evaluate personnel awareness and organizational resilience. The toolkit provides specialized tooling for phishing campaign testing and credential theft simulation. It enables the creation of deceptive emails and landing pages to identify vulnerabilities in how users handle sensitive account information. The system includes capabilities for security awareness training and br

Foreman is a lifecycle infrastructure management platform used for automating the provisioning, configuration, and monitoring of physical, virtual, and cloud servers. It serves as a central hub for managing the entire lifespan of a server, from initial deployment and operating system upgrades to decommissioning and auditing. The platform functions as a hybrid cloud manager and bare-metal provisioning tool, providing a unified interface to control virtual machine lifecycles across diverse hypervisors and public cloud providers. It automates hardware discovery and operating system deployment us

This project is a post-exploitation framework and privilege escalation script suite designed to scan local system configurations for security gaps. It serves as a system enumeration toolset used to identify paths for gaining higher administrative privileges on a target host. The suite incorporates capabilities for security penetration testing and vulnerability assessment reporting. It uses shell-based system enumeration and pattern-based vulnerability matching to detect misconfigurations, while employing heuristic-based permission analysis to evaluate system flags. Findings are gathered thro

tdl is a command-line tool for Telegram account automation, media management, and data archiving. It provides a programmatic interface for downloading and uploading files, forwarding messages, and exporting chat history, member lists, and media into structured JSON files. The project distinguishes itself through a session management system that isolates multiple account identities using unique namespaces. It features expression-based routing for messages and uploads, allowing users to direct content to specific destination chats using custom logic and dynamic caption generation. The tool cov

BloodHound is an identity risk management platform and graph-based attack path analyzer used to map identity relationships and permissions in Active Directory. It functions as a security tool for auditing directory services, uncovering unintended privilege relationships, and visualizing sequences of permissions that can lead to domain compromise. The project differentiates itself as a comprehensive adversary emulation framework that coordinates remote agents and executes post-exploitation commands. It includes a reverse proxy for bypassing multi-factor authentication via real-time session hij

Empire is a command and control framework and post-exploitation toolkit used for network penetration testing. It serves as a centralized platform for coordinating remote agent communication and automating the delivery of security testing payloads to target systems. The project provides a suite of modules for host reconnaissance, lateral movement, and credential harvesting across corporate environments. It functions as a remote administration tool to maintain persistence and execute commands on compromised hosts. The framework incorporates capabilities for agent orchestration and the executio

Stitch is a command and control framework and post-exploitation toolkit designed for managing multiple remote systems from a central server. It functions as a remote administration tool and payload builder, enabling the execution of commands and the deployment of agents across different operating systems. The project features a cross-platform builder for generating custom executable agents with configurable network bindings and boot behaviors. It utilizes encrypted communication channels to secure traffic between the controller and remote clients, and it supports the execution of dynamic scri

Viper is a command and control infrastructure manager and post-exploitation framework designed for adversary attack simulation and security assessment. It functions as an orchestrator for penetration testing, combining a system for managing compromised hosts across multiple operating systems with tools for security workflow automation. The platform is distinguished by its use of large language model agents to coordinate red team tasks, automate data processing, and provide intelligent decision support. It includes a network pivot visualizer that uses directional graphs to map relationships an

ScoutSuite is a multi-cloud security audit and configuration tool designed to identify security risks and misconfigurations across cloud environments. It functions as a security posture manager and compliance auditor, gathering resource metadata from cloud APIs to evaluate infrastructure against security benchmarks. The tool provides auditing capabilities for AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Kubernetes clusters and control planes. It distinguishes itself by decoupling data collection from analysis, allowing users to cache cloud configurations locally for offline auditing and iterative rul

PentestGPT is an autonomous security testing framework that leverages large language models to plan, execute, and coordinate end-to-end penetration testing engagements. By functioning as an autonomous agent, the system automates the entire testing lifecycle, from initial reconnaissance and vulnerability analysis to the generation of custom exploits and the execution of post-exploitation tasks. The platform distinguishes itself through a multi-agent orchestration system that coordinates specialized AI agents to collaborate on complex, multi-stage attack chains. It integrates multimodal context

Evil-WinRM is a penetration testing tool and interactive remote shell designed for managing and executing commands on remote Windows systems via the WinRM protocol. It functions as a security utility for auditing Windows environments through remote command execution and credential manipulation. The tool distinguishes itself through its authentication capabilities, acting as both a Kerberos authentication client using ticket-based files and an NTLM pass-the-hash client that accesses services using password hashes instead of plaintext credentials. To evade detection, it supports in-memory paylo

This project is an automated security testing suite designed to detect and exploit database vulnerabilities. It functions as a command-line utility that streamlines the identification, verification, and exploitation of web application flaws by automating the injection of malicious payloads into input parameters. The tool provides a comprehensive framework for database enumeration, allowing users to extract schema information, user data, and system configurations from identified injection points. What distinguishes this tool is its sophisticated engine for dynamic payload adaptation and heuris

PEASS-ng is an automated penetration testing framework designed to identify privilege escalation vectors on local systems. It functions as a security assessment utility that scans environments for misconfigurations, sensitive files, and insecure permissions to uncover paths for unauthorized privilege elevation. The project distinguishes itself through a modular script-based enumeration engine that adapts to the target environment. It utilizes environment-aware capability detection and cross-platform shell abstraction to normalize data collection across diverse operating systems, while operati

Traitor is a Linux privilege escalation framework and automated root exploit suite. It provides specialized utilities for scanning system misconfigurations and deploying automated exploit scripts on local Linux hosts to elevate user privileges to the root level. The tool identifies insecure system setups and binary vulnerabilities, such as GTFOBins, to map potential routes for gaining root access. It automates the process of discovering and exploiting these local vulnerabilities through targeted exploit execution and the deployment of sequential scripts. The system covers vulnerability asses

upload-labs is a file upload vulnerability lab and penetration testing sandbox. It consists of a collection of intentionally vulnerable web applications designed for practicing the discovery and exploitation of file upload security flaws. The project serves as a web security training ground and cybersecurity education lab. It provides a simulated environment for learning how to bypass upload restrictions and achieve remote code execution on servers through controlled laboratory exercises. The system includes capabilities for vulnerability research simulation and penetration testing practice.

Learn-Web-Hacking is a structured web security study guide and penetration testing knowledge base. It provides a collection of research notes focused on identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications and network protocols. The project includes specialized frameworks for evaluating security risks in large language models to prevent prompt injection, as well as guides for hardening cloud-native infrastructure, including container standards and orchestration tools. It also covers the analysis of identity standards and authentication protocols. The material spans a broad range of

Apfell is a red teaming framework and command and control server designed for collaborative adversary simulation. It provides a centralized infrastructure to manage remote agents and distribute tasking across multiple operating systems using a message broker for real-time synchronization. The system functions as a distributed agent orchestrator, allowing teams to coordinate complex attack chains and synchronize container data. It features a multi-platform payload manager that enables the downloading and integration of custom agents and command profiles from remote repositories. The platform

Hapi is a configuration-driven web framework for building secure and scalable HTTP servers and APIs on the Node.js runtime. It functions as a REST API development framework and an enterprise server implementation focused on stability, security, and comprehensive input validation. The framework is built around a plugin-based architecture, allowing core functionality and custom logic to be organized into modular, registerable plugins. It serves as an HTTP request lifecycle manager, enabling the interception and modification of requests through pre-handlers and extensions before they reach the f