The Linux Ninja

The Remote Exploit Development Team announced today that the BackTrack 4 Beta is now available for download. Now based on Debian, BackTrack 4 is more of a full distribution rather than the LiveCD of previous versions. Because of this, BackTrack 4 can now use Ubuntu software repositories and can even be upgraded in case of an update. The announcement also confirmed that users will get regular security tool updates as they are released via the repositories.

The features listed in the announcement also confirm Pryit CUDA support and kernel 2.6.28.1 with better hardware compatibility.

While the team considers the beta to be stable and usable, some tools have been left out, but will be added to the repositories soon. Here’s a Visit the download page here for some pentesting goodness. Also, we plan on having a first impressions review of the beta in the near future, so check back often.

The remote-exploit guys released a beta for the anticipated (well, anticipated by us security geeks) BackTrack 4 at Shmoocon this past weekend for those that were able to attend. In a comment on the BackTrack 4 blog, Muts commented on some questions about Shmoocon attendees uploading the BT4 beta and also revealed that they will be releasing to the public soon (maybe even the final version?):

There are lots of “BackTrack 4″ torrents, many of them are CD bootlegs of various artists. We would not be surprised in the least if a iso was “leaked”. We’re not so much concerned about “leaks” as we are of not having uniform versions of BT on the net. Not to mention that the ISOs can be modified on the way…

Keep your pants on, we’re almost there….just getting the mirrors ready, and all will be good! Stick to official releases!

The list of new features that are coming include:

• Native support for Pico e12 and e16 cards is now fully functional, making BackTrack the first pentesting distro to fully utilize these awesome tiny machines.

• Support for PXE Boot – Boot BackTrack over the network with PXE supported cards!

• SAINT EXPLOIT – kindly provided by SAINT corporation for our users with a limited number of free IPs.

• MALTEGO – The guys over at Paterva did outstanding work with Maltego 2.0.2 – which is featured in BackTrack as a community edition.

• The latest mac80211 wireless injection pacthes are applied, with several custom patches for rtl8187 injection speed enhancements. Wireless injection support has never been so broad and functional.

• Unicornscan – Fully functional with postgress logging support and a web front end.

• RFID support (thanks to Adam Laurie)

• Possible CUDA support…

• New and updated tools – the list is endless!

I can’t wait to get my hands on an official release. Great job guys, keep up the awesome work!

UPDATE: The BackTrack team released the beta to the public earlier today! [read article ]