Blindly Hacking 01 Installing Kali with a Screen Reader

UPDATE: The issues discussed in this video have been fixed in the latest weekly images for KaliLinux after this video went live. The video will remain up for educational purposes.
The weekly images can be accessed here: cdimage.kali.org/kali-images/...
Presumably, the first full-on release for Kali in 2022 will have these changes included, but given Kali uses a rolling release cadence, the weekly image should work for now until that happens. The original video description follows below.
KaliLinux is an industry standard for doing a whole bunch of cybersecurity activities, from penetration testing to phorensic analysis and anything in between.
Unfortunately, installing this OS in a virtual machine comes with some hurdles for blind computer users using a screen reader, and while things appear to have improved somewhat, there are still some gotchas that can stop you dead in your tracks if you don't know how to dodge around them.
In this video, I will go through installing Kali with a screen reader, showing off every step of the way what to do and where to go until we get to a talking KaliLinux instance installed on a virtual machine.
This is the start of a new series, Blindly Hacking, where I take a look at a cybersecurity topic I've either been asked about, or go through mainstream resources in order to make them approachable for blind learners.
Please note that youtube videos are a new medium for me. The audio of this video may be somewhat quiet, subsequent videos will have a more streamlined production process to stop these kinds of glitches from occurring.
Now, for the notes:
KaliLinux 2021.4 is, as stated in the video, currently inaccessible due to a bug that makes audio not work during the install of the OS. Until this gets resolved, grab the latest working release , v2021.3, from the link below:
cdimage.kali.org/kali-images/...
The commands we type towards the end of the video, are , in order:
ctrl+alt+f3 to open a new text console within the Kali instance. This will ask you for your username, return, password, return.
sudo systemctl start ssh
This will ask you for your password again, return. SSH should now be running on the kali instance.
From the logged in SSH shell:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install espeak-ng speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng
Answer "Yes" at the prompt.
Please subscribe if you'd like to keep track of new videos coming out. I intend to make several more in 2022 so if you liked this or thought it was useful, more is on the way.
I can be found in the following places in the meantime:
Twitter: / zersiax
Mastodon: [e-mail]
Github: github.com/zersiax
web: florianbeijers.xyz

[@Technicalclass666]

Please make a more videos this series

[@TechPro2005]

Very nice tutorial. I want to get into ethical hacking myself, so I definitely look forward to more from the series. Is there any advantage to installing as a VM though, as opposed to WSL?

[@florianbeij]

For screen reader users I would say using a dedicated virtual machine is still your best bet and that is mostly because of gUI apps you may or may not want to use. While WSL2 does allow for GUI stuff using Orca, I have found this to be somewhat laggy and crackly in wsl2. Having a dedicated VM also feels more secure to me particularly when working with malware samples and such.
If you just want to use commandline tools though things get a bit more blurry. I don't know if WSL2 for example lets you use a USB wireless adapter in monitoring mode for wireless network packet capturing yet.
Also, don't feel confined to just Kali for your ethical hacking pursuits. Some tools just work a lot better on Windows, among them Wireshark and Zaproxxy, so definitely keep that avenue open as well.

[@dontmindbeingblindd]

Hello. My name is Grace. I am completly blind minus a bit of light perseption. I have always been into tech, but not just cool apps or tts voices. I code in python, html, and am learning java. I passed the ap comp sci in 9th grade. I run arch Linux and windows 11 dool booted on my main computer, and am in the process of building my own desktop. I have taken an interest in ethical hacking, and all this was basicly to say that I just found your videos about 5 minutes ago and cannot wait to watch them all. Could I reach out if I have any questions?

[@naliniuppari6471]

Can we activate screen reader by using commands in the terminal

[@gaganuppari1188]

wich screenreader your useing in windows

[@florianbeij]

The windows portion of the video used NVDA, the Kali portion used mostly Speakup with a dash of Orca towards the end. You could very easily recreate what was done using JAWS though; it has very similar OCR capabilities