No source code repository. Unless there's one, this will not be packaged by the team or any contributor.

Hi Arszilla,

Thanks for the feedback. I understand the packaging team needs source access.

The repository is currently private, but I'm happy to grant temporary read access to the Kali maintainer who will be packaging the tool. Please let me know the GitHub username, and I'll add them as a collaborator with read permissions.

I'm happy to grant temporary access to the POLTERGEIST repository. Note that the codebase includes both standard and UNLEASHED components. The UNLEASHED module requires a private key and is not functional without it — it will remain dormant in any standard build. The tool you package will be the full standard POLTERGEIST with all 10 agents and 55 vectors.

Tool details:

Version: v1.0.0 (tagged release)

License: Apache 2.0

Documentation: https://red-specter.co.uk/poltergeist/docs/

Once packaging is complete, you can let me know and I'll remove access.

Let me know if you need anything else.

That’s not how packaging tools work on Linux. Besides being highly suspicious and deemed as “proprietary”, packages need to be monitored for new releases and tags.

As a result, my recommendation for the Kali Team, who has the final decision, is to ditch this and the other packages requested in this “family”, unless they are open-source, non-AI slop etc. tooling that is worth having in Kali.

Hi Arszilla,

Thank you for the honest feedback and for taking the time to review the submission. I understand and respect Kali's packaging policies and the need for fully open, publicly accessible source code.

For now, we'll be focusing our immediate efforts on other distribution channels that align with our current development and release model. Should our approach to public source availability change in the future, I'll certainly revisit the possibility of submitting to Kali again.

Appreciate your time and consideration.

Hello @RichardBarron27,

thank you for your submission, but we'll have to decline.

Broadly speaking, we don't and we can't package every possible infosec tools in Kali. So we prioritize tools that already have a notoriety of some sort, a proven userbase, some kind of maturity, etc. It also helps if the software is developed in the open, so that we can assess what the tool is, what it does, and see what the wider infosec community thinks of it.

Best of luck with your project!

Hi arnaudr,

Thank you for the response.

Understood on the criteria. For context:

• 12 tools, 34,473 tests across the ecosystem
• Full packaging: PyPI, Debian (.deb), BlackArch
  (PKGBUILD), Docker — all complete
• Gartner vendor briefing confirmed 24 March 2026
• MITRE ATLAS 100%, OWASP LLM 10/10, EU AI Act 7/7

The tools are private repos by design — offensive
security tooling with cryptographic UNLEASHED gates.
Open sourcing NEMESIS or SPECTER SOCIAL would be
irresponsible. That's a deliberate decision, not a
maturity issue.

red-specter.co.uk

Richard Barron