The objective of this guide is to show the default username and password for Kali Linux. The guide will be applicable for persistent installations, as well as the live CD image and Kali virtual machine downloads in VirtualBox or VMware.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- Default username and password for Kali
- How to execute Linux commands with administrative root privileges
- How to change to root shell
- How to change user and root passwords
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Kali Linux |
| Software | N/A |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Default Username and Password
The default username and password for Kali Linux is kali. The root password is also kali.
This isn’t applicable for a persistent installation of Kali, since you are asked during installation to specify a username and password. Rather, the default username and passwords only apply to the live CD image, and the VirtualBox or VMware installation of Kali.
Access root Shell on Kali
To execute a command as root on Kali, you’ll need to preface the command with sudo.
$ sudo mycommand
Alternatively, you can become the root user by using the following command.
$ sudo -i
You can always use the whoami command to verify which account you are logged into.
# whoami root
To change the password of either your normal account or root user, use the passwd command.
$ passwd OR $ sudo passwd
Conclusion
In this guide, we learned the default username and password for the normal and root accounts on Kali Linux. We also saw how to elevate to root user and change the password for accounts on the system.