I recently installed Kali Linux 2016.1 and did an update. The whois command works fine.
root@Kali:~# cat /etc/issue Kali GNU/Linux Rolling \n \l root@Kali:~# dpkg -l whois ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-=====================-===============-===============-================================================ ii whois 5.2.12 amd64 intelligent WHOIS client root@Kali:~# whois www.google.com Whois Server Version 2.0 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Server Name: WWW.GOOGLE.COM.AR Registrar: ENOM, INC. Whois Server: whois.enom.com Referral URL: http://www.enom.com You can try to install manually:
root@Kali:~# apt install whois Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done whois is already the newest version (5.2.12). root@Kali:~# apt-cache policy whois whois: Installed: 5.2.12 Candidate: 5.2.12 Version table: *** 5.2.12 500 500 http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status