BackTrack 5 R2 Released

BackTrack 5 R2 – New Kernel, New Tools

After months of development, bug fixes, upgrades, and the addition of 42 new tools, we are happy to announce the full release of BackTrack 5 R2 available for download now. Running our custom-built 3.2.6 kernel with the best wireless support available, this is our fastest and best release of BackTrack yet. In the past few weeks, we have had a flood of submissions to our BackTrack Redmine Tracker with submissions for many new tools and dozens of packages that needed to be updated and this has helped to make this one of the strongest releases we’ve ever had.

Once again, our good friends over at Paterva have created a special BackTrack edition of Maltego 3.1.0 for your data mining pleasure and we have also included their recently-released CaseFile tool to help you organize and collate data from numerous sources. If you have never used these tools before, you really need to…they will change the way your interact with data and conduct reconnaissance.

You will also find we have included Metasploit 4.2.0 Community Edition, version 3.0 of the Social Engineer Toolkit, BeEF 0.4.3.2, and many other tool upgrades too numerous to mention.

In addition to the aforementioned updates and additions, we have also added the following new tools to BackTrack:

arduino	bluelog	bt-audit	dirb	dnschef	dpscan	easy-creds	extundelete
findmyhash	golismero	goofile	hashcat-gui	hash-identifier	hexorbase	horst	hotpatch
joomscan	killerbee	libhijack	magictree	nipper-ng	patator	pipal	pyrit
reaver	rebind	rec-studio	redfang	se-toolkit	sqlsus	sslyze	sucrack
thc-ssl-dos	tlssled	uniscan	vega	watobo	wce	wol-e	xspy

BackTrack 5 R2 – Reliable Weekly Security Updates and Fixes

Perhaps the one change that we are most excited about in this release is that we are now including the Ubuntu updates in our repositories on a more regular basis. So from now on, when you run a dist-upgrade, you will also receive the updated tools and packages that are being pulled from Ubuntu, making for a more secure and stable distribution. Rest assured that we will not be pushing out the updates blindly. We will be testing the updates internally to ensure that they don’t break any functionality prior to rolling them out publicly.

If you are merely upgrading your existing BackTrack installation to R2 instead of doing a fresh install, you can add the new update repository as shown below.

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

BackTrack 5 R2 – Wiki Updates

Along with this release, we have created some new HOWTO’s in our wiki to cover some things that simply can’t be packaged efficiently into a distribution, particularly the configuration of clusters.

• Building a Pyrit Cluster


• Creating a John the Ripper Cluster


• Enabling PAE in BT5 R2


• Installing VMware Player


• Installing VMware Tools

We hope that you enjoy this new release of BackTrack as much as we enjoyed creating it. Our goal, as always, is to be the world’s best penetration testing distribution so if you find bugs or have tool suggestions, please feel free to open up a ticket in our Redmine tracker.

Upgrading to BackTrack 5 R2

The long awaited release of the BackTrack 5 R2 kernel has arrived, and it’s now available in our repositories. With a spanking brand new 3.2.6 kernel, a huge array of new and updated tools and security fixes, BT5 R2 will provide a more stable and complete penetration testing environment than ever before. We will start a series of blog posts on how to upgrade, deal with VMWare, and even build your own updated BT5 R2 by yourself. For now though, here’s how to get the new kernel and all of the updated goodness:

1. Update and upgrade your BT5 (R1) installation:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install beef
reboot

Once that’s done, you should already have the new kernel installed as well as any last updates we have for the official R2 release. You need to reboot to have the 3.2.6 kernel kick in.

2. OPTIONAL – Once rebooted, log back in, and get your pretty splash screen back.

fix-splash
reboot

On the next reboot, you should see the red console splash screen appear.

3. Verify that you are running a 3.2.6 kernel:

uname -a

You should see something like “Linux bt 3.2.6 …”

4. Feel free to install any or all of the new tools featured in BackTrack 5 R2:

apt-get install pipal findmyhash metasploit joomscan hashcat-gui golismero easy-creds pyrit sqlsus vega libhijack tlssled hash-identifier wol-e dirb reaver wce sslyze magictree nipper-ng rec-studio hotpatch xspy arduino rebind horst watobo patator thc-ssl-dos redfang findmyhash killerbee goofile bt-audit bluelog extundelete se-toolkit casefile sucrack dpscan dnschef

5. Add the new security updates repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, and run another upgrade.

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

During the last upgrade you’ll be asked about file revision updates. Make sure to always keep the locally installed file. Feel free to press “Enter” and accept all the defaults.

6. Some of the newly installed services will be set to start on boot. We like disabling these as needed:

/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
/etc/init.d/cups stop
/etc/init.d/winbind stop

update-rc.d -f cups remove
update-rc.d -f apache2 remove
update-rc.d -f winbind remove

And…you’re done! Expect a more comprehensive introduction to BT5 R2, on the day of the Official release – March 1st! The BackTrack 5 R2 ISOS will we available for download from our site on March 1st via Torrent only. HTTP links will be added a few days later.