Best Operating System For Hacking- BACKTRACK

BackTrack

BackTrack 5 R1
Company / developer	Mati Aharoni, Emanuele Gentili, and others.[1]
OS family	Unix-like
Working state	Active
Source model	Open source
Latest stable release	5 R1 / August 18, 2011; 3 months ago
Latest unstable release	5[2]
Supported platforms	i386(x86), amd64(x86-64), ARM
Kernel type	Monolithic
Default user interface	Bash, KDE Plasma Desktop, Fluxbox[3] [4], GNOME
License	Various
Official website	www.backtrack-linux.org

BackTrack is an operating system based on the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution aimed at digital forensics and penetration testing use.^[5] It is named after backtracking, a search algorithm. The current version is BackTrack 5, code name "Revolution."^[6]

Contents  [hide]  1 History 2 Tools 3 Releases 4 References 5 External link

[edit] History

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.

[edit] Tools

BackTrack provides users with easy access to a comprehensive and large collection of security-related tools ranging from port scanners to password crackers. Support for Live CD and Live USB functionality allows users to boot BackTrack directly from portable media without requiring installation, though permanent installation to hard disk is also an option.
BackTrack includes many well known security tools including:

• Metasploit integration (Non-Working ^[8] and Officially Unsupported ^[9])
• RFMON Injection capable wireless drivers
• Aircrack-NG
• Kismet
• Nmap
• Ophcrack
• Ettercap
• Wireshark (formerly known as Ethereal)
• BeEF (Browser Exploitation Framework)
• Hydra
• OWASP Mantra Security Framework collection of hacking tools, add-ons and scripts based on Firefox
• Cisco OCS Mass Scanner A very reliable and fast scanner for Cisco routers with telnet/enable default password.
• Quypt (Terminal Emulator) (which is private software by Crimson Hacking group, which has leaked to the Mainstream) Blackhat
• A large collection of exploits as well as more commonplace software such as browsers.

BackTrack arranges tools into 12 categories:

• Information Gathering
• Vulnerability Assessment
• Exploitation Tools
• Privilege Escalation
• Maintaining Access
• Reverse Engineering
• RFID Tools
• Stress testing
• Forensics
• Reporting Tools
• Services
• Miscellaneous

[edit] Releases

Date	Release
February 5, 2006	BackTrack v.1.0 Beta
May 26, 2006	The BackTrack project released its first non-beta version (1.0).
March 6, 2007	BackTrack 2 final released.
June 19, 2008	BackTrack 3 final released.
January 9, 2010	BackTrack 4 final release. (Now based on Debian)
May 8, 2010	BackTrack 4 R1 release
November 22, 2010	BackTrack 4 R2 release
May 10, 2011	BackTrack 5 release (Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Linux kernel 2.6.38)
August 18, 2011	BackTrack 5 R1 release (Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Linux kernel 2.6.39.4)

As soon as newer versions of BackTrack are released, older versions lose their support and service from the BackTrack development team.