BackTrack, Live CD with Security Tools

Original date: May 17, 2006 1:15 AM by sonnik

Last night I stumbled onto a blurb about a Linux Live CD called "Troppix" that had support for my laptop's Wi-Fi. DistroWatch.com lists the project as being cancelled (perhaps for legal reasons?). No fear, shortly after that I was reading up on WHAX.

Now WHAX is called "BackTrack". I've been familiar with WHAX for sometime, but I've never downloaded it to try it out. BackTrack has underwent many changes in it's history. It was formerly called Whoppix, as it was based on Knoppix. Then, it became WHAX, as the developers based it on SLAX. Clever, huh?

Some may claim that these distributions lead to nothing but network hijinks, but that's simply not true. These distributions allow anyone to quickly and easily test your network for security. Sure, someone with malicious intent could use these with ill intentions. However, I can probably assume you're concerned about your network's wired or wireless security. Like the bad guys, you probably need to have this distribution in your arsenal.

As far as a Live CD Linux distribution goes, it's really solid. It has just enough non-security extras (like XMMS) to not get in the way, yet be useful for general "Live CD" use. In addition, the assortment of wired/wireless security tools is quite helpful also:


I quickly downloaded the ISO image, burned it, and booted it up. I'm pretty familiar with Linux, so I didn't really need to read much. I played around with some shell commands, tried startx and moments later I was inside a KDE session. The distribution included drivers for my Centrino-based (IPW2200) laptop. I had to rmmod and modprobe the ipw2200 drivers to get the device to work, but I seem to have to do that in my Fedora Core installation also. No big deal there.

I tried out one of the Aircrack programs, and was scanning without a hitch:

Be sure to explore around the wiki-based Remote-Exploit.org web site; it's quite organized and has a lot of good information.