SET vs Nessus vs Veil: Which Domain and IP Lookup Tool tool is Best in 2025?

SET, or Social-Engineer Toolkit, is a leading open-source framework pre-installed in Kali Linux (version 8.0.3), designed for ethical hackers and penetration testers. This social engineering toolkit for cybersecurity automates attacks like phishing, credential theft, and payload delivery, making it a premier penetration testing tool for social engineering assessments. With a 30.40 MB footprint and over 10 attack vectors, SET empowers red teams to simulate real-world threats, integrating seamlessly with Metasploit for robust security testing.

Nessus is a leading vulnerability assessment tool developed by Tenable, Inc., widely recognized as the industry’s most trusted scanner for identifying security weaknesses across networks, devices, applications, and cloud environments. Launched in 1998 as an open-source project by Renaud Deraison, it transitioned to a proprietary model in 2005 and now offers two enterprise versions: Nessus Professional and Nessus Expert. With over 252,000 plugins and 100,000 plus CVEs, Nessus delivers high-accuracy scans to detect vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues. It supports unlimited IT assessments, customizable templates (450+), and vulnerability prioritization using CVSS v4, EPSS, and Tenable’s VPR. Nessus Expert extends capabilities to web application scanning, external attack surface monitoring, and cloud infrastructure audits.

Veil is an open-source framework designed to generate Metasploit payloads that bypass common antivirus solutions, pre-installed on Kali Linux at /usr/share/veil. Developed by Chris Truncer and maintained by the Veil-Framework community, it consists of two main tools: Veil-Evasion for creating undetectable executables and Veil-Ordnance for generating custom shellcode. Veil leverages languages like Python, C, Go, and PowerShell to produce payloads for Windows, Linux, and macOS, integrating with Metasploit for penetration testing. Its obfuscation techniques and encryption options make it a critical tool for ethical hackers and red teamers.