BackTrack and how to install it.

What Is BackTrack?

So now that you are familiar with Linux, let me introduce you to BackTrack. BackTrack is a
Linux penetration testing distro developed by Offensive Security especially for ethical hackers and

penetration testers. It contains all the popular tools and software used for pen testing a variety of
services, networks, and devices.

BackTrack 5 is the latest version of the Linux penetration testing distro at the time of writing
this chapter. It comes in two flavors: Gnome and KDE. Gnome is an Ubuntu-based Linux operating
system that has officially been introduced only in the latest version of BackTrack. Here is a
screenshot of BackTrack 5.



How to Get BackTrack 5 Running
Now that you have a basic idea of what BackTrack is and why it is used, it’s time to install
BackTrack on our box and get things going. There are many ways you can get BackTrack up
and running. I install BackTrack on a virtualization software such as VMware or virtual box.
Personally, I am a fan of virtual box, since it does not take much of my computer’s memory.
Therefore, what we will learn next is how to install BackTrack on virtual box.

Installing BackTrack on Virtual Box

There are times when we need to switch between operating systems rapidly and we need our
BackTrack running alongside another OS like Windows or Red Hat Linux. One advantage of
doing this is it gives us more accessibility. For doing this you need to download VM Virtual Box,
which is a freely available tool.

Step 1—After downloading and installing virtual box on to your PC, click on the “New”
button. A dialogue box will appear where you would need to type the name of the “OS,” the
“Version,” and the operating system type. In my case the name would be “BackTrack,” the
OS “Linux,” and the version “Ubuntu.”

Step 2—The next step would be to allocate the RAM; it is recommended that you allocate at
least 1024 MB (1 GB) for BackTrack to run perfectly.

Step 3—Next, choose to create a virtual drive and then in the next window select the hard drive
type as VDI (Virtual Disk Image).

Step 4—In the next step, you have to choose if you want the hard disk to be dynamically allocated
or have a fixed size. If you have enough space on your hard disk, you might want to
choose the first option. Nevertheless, it’s up to you.

Step 5—Next, choose the name of your virtual hard drive and allocate the size of the hard disk.

Step 6—So, now when the virtual hard disk has been created and other settings are selected,
load the BackTrack that was downloaded onto the virtual box and click “Start”.

That’s all we need to do. We now have BackTrack installed on our virtual box.

Installing BackTrack on a Portable USB

BackTrack can also be made portable by installing it on to a USB flash drive. This way you can
carry BackTrack Live anywhere. This practice is useful for outsource penetration tests and, moreover,it is very easy to make BackTrack USB.

For this you need the following:
 1.USB flash drive (minimum 8 GB)
 2.A disk burning software.

For this purpose, we are going to use PowerISO, which is freely available online at http://www.
poweriso.com

Step 1—Format your flash drive and ensure that it has at least 7 GB of free space.

Step 2—Open PowerISO from the “Start” menu.

Step 3—Click on “Tools” and from the dropdown list select “Make a bootable USB.”

Step 4—The following dialogue box will appear.

Step 5—Locate your BackTrack ISO disk image.

Step 6—Now it will start burning the image on to your USB drive.

Step 7—When the process is complete, the following message appears.

Next is installing linux backtrack on your hard drive.