
**Legal notice:**

The usage of penetration testing tools outside your own laboratory environment requires the permission of the organization you attack. Penetration testing without permission can have legal consequences.

To avoid such legal conflicts please refer to the [EC-Council: Code of Ethics](https://www.eccouncil.org/Support/code-of-ethics).

Penetration Testing
===================

"A penetration test, colloquially known as a pen test, is an authorised simulated attack on a computer system that looks for security weaknesses, potentially gaining access to the system's features and data." (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetration_test)).

Penetration Testing Distributions
---------------------------------

The following instructions explain how to install a penetration testing distribution within Qubes OS.  

- [BlackArch](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/pentesting/blackarch/)
- [Kali](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/pentesting/kali/)
- [PenTester Framework (PTF)](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/pentesting/ptf/)
- [Parrot](https://www.parrotsec.org/docs/parrot-on-qubesos.html)

Using Qubes OS to host a "hacking" laboratory
---------------------------------------------

Qubes OS is a hypervisor based operating system. Qubes OS can host various operating systems such as Linux, Unix or Windows and run them in parallel. Qubes OS can therefore be used to host your own "hacking" laboratory.
