How to Enable and Start SSH on Kali Linux

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The Linux distribution Kali used by many penetration testers (including those here at LMG Security) recently released version 2017.1 of their rolling release. For quite some time now (Since version 2.0) Kali has used Systemd (System Management Daemon) in place of an init system.  This change brought with it a new way of enabling and starting services, even though many still use the old commands, which often still work but may also lead to errors.  This post will go over the Systemd method for enabling and starting the SSH (Secure Shell) service on Kali Linux.

The openssh-server package should already be installed, to verify this you can use the following command:

# apt list openssh-server

You should see the version with [installed] after it like this:

If it’s not installed, you can use this command to install it:

# apt install openssh-server

When enabling the service, be sure to fully secure SSH first.  I will cover some of the basics briefly, but this is not meant to be a guide on securely running an SSH server.  Since Kali comes with pre-generated SSH keys, to make it more secure, the first thing we will do is generate new ones.

To backup the original keys first as a precaution use:

# mkdir /etc/ssh/default_keys
# mv /etc/ssh/ssh_host_* /etc/ssh/default_keys/

Then to regenerate the keys:

# dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server

The next step is to edit the SSH server configuration file with the settings you need:

# nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

If you are only planning on using SSH briefly the defaults are probably fine.  If you think you will use it for a length of time I would recommend at minimum enabling public key authentication:

PubkeyAuthentication yes

Then disabling password authentication:

PasswordAuthentication no

You could also allow the root user login here, but instead consider creating a non-privileged user account instead.

It’s useful to know that Systemd has different units, a unit configuration file encodes information.  The units relevant to SSH are ssh.service and ssh.socket. At a basic level a service unit controls a process and a socket unit controls a filesystem or network socket.

If you only need to temporarily start up the SSH service it’s recommended to use ssh.socket:

# systemctl start ssh.socket

When finished:

# systemctl stop ssh.socket

To instead permanently enable the SSH service to start whenever the system is booted use:

# systemctl enable ssh.service

Then to use SSH immediately without having to reboot use:

# systemctl start ssh.service

To check the status of the service you can use:

# systemctl status ssh.service

To stop the SSH service use:

# systemctl stop ssh.service

And to disable the SSH service so it no longer starts at boot:

# systemctl disable ssh.service

This gives you the basics of starting and enabling the SSH service in Kali Linux.  If you are planning on using the system for any length of time I highly recommend going further with securing the SSH service. If you have any questions or comments about SSH on Kali Linux, contact us at [email protected]