Over four months after its last 6.3 release, Parrot OS, a versatile Debian-based Linux distro designed for ethical hackers and cybersecurity pros, announced the release of version 6.4.
This update ships with Linux kernel 6.12, offering broader hardware support and kernel-level mitigations that are useful to penetration testers. Meanwhile, flagship offensive-security frameworks—including Metasploit 6.4.71, Sliver, Caido 0.48.1, and Empire 6.1.2—arrive with upstream bug fixes and new exploit modules.
Complementing those hitters is a refreshed toolbox:
- airgeddon 11.50 streamlines wireless auditing.
- Starkiller 3.0 polishes the GUI for PowerShell Empire.
- netexec 1.4 and enum4linux-ng 1.3.4 extend network enumeration options.
- Two newcomers—Goshs 1.0.5 and ConvoC2—broaden file-transfer and command-and-control choices out of the box.
On the defensive side, Parrot’s custom Firefox ESR build inherits Mozilla’s latest LTS (Firefox 140) while keeping Parrot’s privacy-hardening patches that disable telemetry, enforce HTTPS, and add anti-fingerprinting tweaks.
Beyond individual packages, the distribution’s maintainers used this cycle to rewrite several build scripts. The aim is to simplify future releases, inject more automation, and reduce human error.
- parrot-menu now exposes quick-launchers for Sliver, Rocket, and other newcomers, making discovery of fresh tooling a one-click affair.
- A longstanding quirk in parrot-core that left
$HOMEpath completion unreliable has been ironed out, while the “/root” directory is no longer world-readable—closing an avoidable privacy gap. - The parrot-firefox-profiles package adds a smart
dpkgtrigger: every time an upstream Firefox update overwrites “distribution.ini,” Parrot automatically restores its hardened config so users don’t have to.
Lastly, with version 6.4 in place, the team is already eyeing Parrot 7.0, which will be entirely rebased on Debian 13 (Trixie). Early teaser notes hint at RISC-V support and multiple desktop flavors.
For more information, refer to the release announcement. The installation ISO images are available from the project’s download section.
If you’re already using Parrot and want to upgrade to version 6.4, you can do so easily by just running sudo parrot-upgrade in the terminal.
