Installing Oracle Java on Kali Rolling 2017.1

Cheat-sheet version:

Download Oracle JRE.

sudo apt install java-package
make-jpkg jre-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz
sudo dpkg -i oracle-java8-jre_8u144_amd64.deb
sudo update-java-alternatives -s oracle-java8-jre-amd64
java -version

Full post:

Since I use Cobalt Strike during my pentests, I like to adhere to the developer’s advice and use Oracle’s Java instead of the OpenJDK package. According to Mr. Mudge, OpenJDK causes various bugs and issues with Cobalt Strike. Personally I find even the official Oracle JRE buggy enough (especially on Linux), so if using the closed-source version helps reduce such problems, I’m willing.

I built a fresh VM on Kali-Rolling 2017.1 and discovered that guides on installing the official Oracle JRE within Kali were lacking. The options I found:

1. Were months old, and mostly referencing Kali 2016 and/or Java 1.7
2. Relied on third-party repositories that I am not thoroughly familiar with (and, even their documents seemed to be out of date).

It’s possible these guides might have worked, but I am hesitant, based on my past experience, to use older guides on newer versions. I am also leery of adding third party repositories.

With the rapid pace of development in Kali-Rolling, I decided to put together this post on how I successfully installed Java 1.8 in Kali-Rolling 2017.1.

Oracle isn’t friendly with Debian (from which Kali is derived), so the only download options on the Oracle site are RPM and gzipped-tar packages, neither of which makes for a streamlined install process. Fortunately, there is an existing tool in the main Debian repositories called JavaPackage. This tool will take a .tar.gz file from the Oracle site and convert it into a .deb file for easy installation in Debian variants.

Setting up the environment consisted of the following steps (if you are kicking it HackNaked style, omit the sudo):

1. Download the latest Oracle JRE package from Oracle. As of this writing, the current version that I was successful with is jre-8u144.
2. Install the Debian package JavaPackage to add the make-jpkg command. sudo apt install java-package
3. Convert the .tar.gz file to .deb with JavaPackage make-jpkg jre-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz
4. Install the new .deb file. sudo dpkg -i oracle-java8-jre_8u144_amd64.deb
5. Update the system to use the new JRE instead of OpenJDK. sudo update-java-alternatives -s oracle-java8-jre-amd64
6. (Optional) Verify the version of Java that is active on the system. java -version

   java version “1.8.0_144” Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_144-b01) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.144-b01, mixed mode)

After this, you should be good to go.