Setup root account on Kali Linux

As of kali linux 2020.1 the root account is not the default user anymore. During the setup a standard non-root account is created used for logging in and standard use of applications. When you need root access for certain applications you can use sudo to elevate privileges for that specific command. Very safe, but not very practical, right?

Since most of the users of kali are people who know security and know what they are doing everybody wants root access all the time. So how can you change this? Two things can be changed which affect the use of the root account.

1. sudo dpkg-reconfigure kali-grant-root

Run this command on the terminal and you will see a question popup.

Choose “Enable password-less privilege escalation” and press enter. Now the following changes are made

From now on you can type “sudo su” in the terminal and you will become root without typing a password.

2. passwd root

On the terminal type “passwd root”, as root user obviously and you can set a password for the root account. Now you can login as root user and never have to sudo su anything. Just use Kali as before with all the root access you need, because we are all very secure people, right?

More info from the creators of Kali Linux