Burp Suite vs PowerShell Empire vs Mimikatz: Which Payload Creator tool is Best in 2025?

Burp Suite is a leading, industry-standard platform for web application security testing, pre-installed on Kali Linux. Developed by PortSwigger, it serves as a powerful toolkit for penetration testers, ethical hackers, and bug bounty hunters to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in web applications. Acting as a man-in-the-middle proxy, Burp Suite intercepts HTTP/HTTPS traffic, enabling detailed analysis, manipulation, and automated scanning. Available in Community (free) and Professional editions, it offers tools like Spider, Scanner, Intruder, and Repeater for comprehensive testing. With features like fuzzing, session management, and extensibility via BApp Store, Burp Suite excels in detecting issues such as SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF, making it essential for securing web applications.

PowerShell Empire is a robust open-source post-exploitation framework pre-installed in Kali Linux (version 6.1.2), crafted for penetration testers and red teams. This post-exploitation tool for ethical hacking leverages PowerShell and Python agents to execute stealthy attacks, making it a leading command-and-control framework for cybersecurity. With a 49.33 MB footprint and modules like Mimikatz and keyloggers, Empire offers secure communications and cross-platform support, empowering testers to simulate advanced persistent threats effectively.

Mimikatz is an open-source, highly potent post-exploitation tool developed by Benjamin Delpy for extracting plaintext credentials, NTLM hashes, and Kerberos tickets from Windows systems. Available on Kali Linux at /usr/share/windows-resources/mimikatz, it is a cornerstone for penetration testers, red teamers, and ethical hackers conducting authorized security assessments. By leveraging Windows’ memory structures, Mimikatz uncovers sensitive authentication data, enabling privilege escalation, lateral movement, and persistence in compromised environments.