Kali Linux 2018.1 has a shiny new 4.14.12 kernel. New kernels always have a lot of new features and the 4.14 kernel is no exception, although two new features really stand out.

• AMD Secure Memory Encryption Support – Secure Memory Encryption is a feature that will be in newer AMD processors that enables automatic encryption and decryption of DRAM. The addition of this features means that systems will no longer (in theory) be vulnerable to cold-boot attacks because, even with physical access, the memory will be not be readable.
• Increased Memory Limits – Current (and older) 64-bit processors have a limit of 64 TB of physical address space and 256 TB of virtual address space (VAS), which was sufficient for more than a decade but with some server hardware shipping with 64 TB of memory, the limits have been reached. Fortunately, upcoming processors will enable 5-level paging, support for which is included in the 4.14 kernel. In short, this means that these new processors will support 4 PB of physical memory and 128 PB of virtual memory. That’s right, petabytes.

In addition to the updated kernel, we have also upgraded a number of packages, including zaproxy, secure-socket-funneling, pixiewps, seclists, burpsuite, dbeaver, and reaver. If you already have a Kali installation, you can easily get the latest version of these tools along with everything else that has been updated: