Thursday, December 29, 2011

Backtrack, An Operating System for Security Purpose

Backtrack
Have everyone know about it?

Backtrack is a Linux based operating system for security purpose created by Matih Aharoni and Max Mosser, it security professional.
It is specially developed for pentesting and digital forensics use. 
The name "Backtrack" come form "backtracking", a search algorithm.
The current stable release is Backtrack 5 R1 with a codename "Revolution"

Below is a brief history of Backtrack taken from wikipedia :
The BackTrack distribution originated from the merger of two formerly competing distributions which focused on penetration testing:
  • WHAX: a Slax based Linux distribution developed by Mati Aharoni, a security consultant. Earlier versions of WHAX were called Whoppix[7] and were based on Knoppix.
  • Auditor Security Collection: a Live CD based on Knoppix developed by Max Moser which included over 300 tools organized in a user-friendly hierarchy.

The overlap with Auditor and WHAX in purpose and tools collection partly led to the merger.

There are a lot of security tools integrated in backtrack. Since the first release the collection of tools grew larger and larger. 

Backtrack divide its tools into some different categories :
  • Information Gathering
  • Vulnerability Assessment
  • Exploitation Tools
  • Privilege Escalation
  • Maintaining Access
  • Reverse Engineering
  • RFID Tools
  • Stress Testing
  • Forensics
  • Reporting Tools
  • Services
  • Miscellaneous

Below is a table show the releases of backtrack :

Want to download ?
Just go to its official site at www.backtrack-linux.org

Let the security awareness awaken !!