Today I tried to get Live Kali Linux working off a USB stick. When I got to the login screen, I tried entering root
as the username and toor
as the password like always, but the login failed. I am out of ideas, since the official Kali site still says those should be the correct login credentials.
Here are the steps for reproducing on my Lenovo y700 laptop:
-
Download a Kali linux iso image from the official website. I tried 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the latest Kali Linux and I also tried an old 2018 image, all with the same results
-
Burn the image onto a flash drive. For this I tried using Rufus, Etcher and the
dd
tool from Linux. I followed the instructions on the official website. -
Plug the USB into the computer, choose "Legacy Mode" from BIOS boot screen (because if I choose UEFI, then even if USB boot is enabled, it says usb boot is disabled in uefi settings). When the grub screen comes up, I can choose either kali or "advanced options". There is no option for installation.
-
Choose the live version and it will boot into a login screen. Enter
root
as the username andtoor
as the password, and getinvalid credentials
as the response
Best Answer
I don’t know if you still need this, but to anyone who does, Kali changed the password structure from root/toor to kali/kali. This was driving me crazy as it was always root/toor before.
See: https://www.kali.org/news/kali-default-non-root-user/