BackTrack 5 “Revolution” Released

The most popular security and penetration testing Linux distribution has been updated once again, this time built from scratch! BackTrack 5, codenamed “Revolution”, is based on Ubuntu Lucid LTS with kernel 2.6.38, and brings with it full 32 and 64-bit support, an ARM-compatible image, forensics and stealth modes, KDE (4.6) and Gnome (2.6) desktop environments, and (allegedly) over 350 updated security tools including Metasploit 3.7.0. Best of all it’s “aligned with industry methodologies”! Whatever that means ;)

It appears BackTrack 5 will only be available torrents for the time being. The torrents are available in the following flavours: Gnome ISO (32bit, 64bit, ARM img), Gnome 32-bit VMware Image, KDE ISO (32bit, 64bit). Here’s the BackTrack downloads page. Those of you wondering which flavour to get between Gnome and KDE, it’s largely dependent on one’s taste, but the BackTrack guys appear to be favouring Gnome (which was the default Ubuntu graphics environment). If you have no idea what to get, then grab the Gnome 32-bit ISO (or VMware image) using the links above. I recommend Transmission (Mac) or uTorrent (Mac/PC) for BitTorrent clients. For anyone who hasn’t used BT before, the default username and password is root/toor.

BackTrack is a great tool for network security specialists and penetration testers, but it’s an even more valuable resource for people looking at learning more about application and network security (and Linux). Although I do have an Ubuntu install, I tend to use BackTrack more often due to the convenience (when I’m not using OSX that is ;).

It’s not possible to upgrade from BT4r2 to BT5, so those of you with installations of BackTrack 4 will need to reinstall (or download the new VM).

Check out their shiny promotional video below!

[Updated] BackTrack 5 R2 is now available, and brings a new kernel and 42 new tools. You can update your existing BT5 (R1) installation by running:

echo “deb http://updates.repository.backtrack-linux.org revolution main microverse non-free testing” >> /etc/apt/sources.list

apt-get update

apt-get dist-upgrade