Awesome Hacking: Your One-Command Hacking Toolset
You know that feeling when you find a perfect hacking tool, bookmark it, and then completely forget where you put it? Or worse, you clone a repo, install everything, and then three months later half the tools are outdated? Yeah, me too.
That's exactly why Awesome Hacking exists. It's a curated list of hacking tools, but with a twist: you can clone it once and update everything with a single command. No more hunting for individual repos or manually tracking version changes.
What It Does
Awesome Hacking is a GitHub repository that aggregates a massive collection of hacking tools, scripts, and resources into one organized folder. Think of it as a Swiss Army knife for penetration testing, bug bounty hunting, and security research — all neatly packaged under one roof.
The repo itself is just a directory structure with links to hundreds of tools. But here's the clever part: each tool is stored as a Git submodule. So when you clone it with --recurse-submodules, you pull down not just the list, but the actual tools themselves.
To update everything, you just run:
git submodule update --remote --merge
That's it. One command updates every single tool in your toolkit.
Why It's Cool
A few things make this stand out from the usual "awesome lists":
1. It's actually usable, not just a README. Most awesome lists are just a wall of links. This one gives you an actual working directory with tools ready to go.
2. Tool categories are clear. You get folders like recon, exploitation, post-exploitation, web, wireless, crypto, forensics, and more. No mental gymnastics required.
3. It's self-updating. The submodule approach means you don't have to manually track 50 different repos. One git pull of the main repo, then one submodule update, and you're current.
4. It's hackable. Since it's all Git, you can fork it, remove tools you never use, add your own custom scripts, or make your own family of toolsets.
5. It's community-curated. The list is maintained by security pros, so you're getting tools that are actually useful, not just random GitHub repos.
How to Try It
Getting started is dead simple:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jekil/awesome-hacking.git
cd awesome-hacking
That's it. You now have a full hacking toolkit in your current directory. Want to update everything later?
git pull
git submodule update --remote --merge
If you don't want every tool (because some are huge), you can clone without submodules and cherry-pick specific tools from the list:
git clone https://github.com/jekil/awesome-hacking.git
cd awesome-hacking
git submodule update --init <tool-name>
Final Thoughts
This isn't some magic one-click exploit tool. It's a well-organized, maintainable collection of open-source tools that security professionals already trust. What makes it valuable is the time it saves you from manually curating, cloning, and updating your toolset.
If you're a pentester, bug bounty hunter, or just a curious dev who wants to understand security tools, clone this repo. Keep it on a USB drive, or use it as your go-to for CTF competitions. The maintenance overhead is almost zero, and the payoff is having a complete, up-to-date toolkit ready when you need it.
Go clean up your Bookmarks bar — this repo probably replaces half of them.
Found this useful? Follow us at @githubprojects for more developer-friendly projects and tools.