From charlesreid1

I am unable to determine the answer to this question: is SSH enabled by default on Kali Linux Raspberry Pi images? Or am I screwing something up on my router?

SSH is on by default

This 2-year-old Kali bug indicates that SSH was enabled on Kali Raspberry Pi images: https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=464

But that was two years ago, and it was inconsistent with what they were doing with other Kali Linux images, so it's dubious whether this information is still accurate.

SSH is off by default

As indicated by my experience with other Kali installations, and as mentioned in the thread above, Kali installations don't have SSH enabled by default.

The question, then, is whether Kali went with PRINCIPLE (not enabling SSH, because they just don't do that) or PRACTICALITY (if you don't enable SSH on a Raspberry Pi, you're now assuming that every RPi user wants to go out and buy a keyboard, mouse, display, and adapter dongle, which is ridiculous).

The Meta-Realization

The meta realization is, it doesn't fucking matter.

You can do whatever the fuck you want with a Kali Linux installer.

If you aren't on a Mac, once you format the SD card to have the Kali Linux Raspberry Pi installer, you can mount both the boot and the Linux partitions of the SD card, and modify it so that the Pi will start any service you want.