BackTrack 4 Beta - the aftermath

Since my last blog post, we've had 49,000+ downloads of the BT4 Beta ISO, and 17,000+ downloads of the VMWare image. This does not include the torrents, direct downloads and shmoo edition copies.

Up to now, we have been getting awesome (!) feedbacks. Hardware compatibility is impressive.

A few minor bugs have been identified, which now can be easily fixed by updating our repo. This is where using well organised repositories pays off. We will be updating several packages and drivers in the near future.

Keep an eye on this blog for updates and package fixes. I will be posting them as they come.

Apropos insane downloads - there have been 2,482,000+ downloads of BT3 iso and 1,575,000+ downloads of the BT3 VM since they came out. Yes, thats "millions". Ph33r.

BackTrack 4 Beta Public Released

Weve gone live with the beta, and the downloads are going crazy. All our mirrors are at 90 mbit, more or less.

You can get the iso here md5sum and sha512sum

And the VMWare image here md5sum and sha512sum

We are trying to get estimates of downloads. If you link to our ISOs, please use:

http://www.remote-exploit.org/cgi-bin/fileget?version=bt4-beta-iso
http://www.remote-exploit.org/cgi-bin/fileget?version=bt4-beta-vm

and do not link them directly.

Release information will shortly be available on the Remote Exploit Web site.

Release in 3...2...1

The Beta ISO and VMWare images are uploaded, and should be synced with our mirrors soon. We will be making a formal announcement on the Remote Exploit site and in the various mailing lists once the links are active.

We've set up a quick install guide for BT4, as there is no official GUI installer yet (we're working on it).
Remember to look here for basic commands / tips and tricks for getting up and running with BT4.

We will be releasing an 850 +MB iso and a VMWare image install. The image was created under VMWare Workstation 6.5.1 and has VMware tools installed. Should also work with VMWare player 2.5.1.

A few additional bugs and cosmetic changes were made since the Shmoo edition, mainly fixing a MySQL server login issue. We will try our best to have an upgrade path from this beta to the final , but by no means make any promises.

We consider the Beta to be very stable and usable. A few tools were kept back from this version, and will be soon added to the repositories.

Keep tuned with this blog for updates !

Shmoocon Highlights

Shmoo is a blast as usual. Lots of laughs, drinks, paybacks and sexually perverse stuff.
In an unlikely and strange cosmic coincidence, some of these moments were captured on video (THANK YOU Mister_X).

As I know these things eventually end up on the web (AKA, "The Pink Pirate Incident"), I decided to preempt this situation by posting these first.

The first gem is a short video of Reliks' awsome talk about Fast Track, with the new improved red skull eyes. During the beginning of the presentation, (Sub) Zero Chaos is hiding under Reliks' speaker table. At a strategic moment he pelts him in the nuts with a lemon. Ph33r.

The second gem captures a kodak moment where Zero Chaos explains why Pentoo is so good. He also stresses the importance of respect amongst friends. I believe his last words in the video are "Gay Chicken". Dont ask.

BackTrack 4 Beta - Shmoo release

This is it! After many months of effort from the Remote Exploit Dev team, BackTrack 4 Beta is ready and available at our Shmoo booth. I thought I'd post up some "getting started" notes, to help people out with the first surge of questions.

• Default password to BackTrack 4 hasn't changed, still root / toor.

• KDE 3 is being used in BT4. We tried KDE 4, really, we did. It sucked. Maybe 4.2 in BT4 final.

• Most of the KDE "apt gettable" packages have "kde3" appended to their names. So "apt-get install kate-kde3" is good, "apt-get install kate" is bad. Use "apt-cache search " to search for packages to install.

• Kernel sources included in /usr/src/linux.

• DHCP disabled by default on boot, you need to /etc/init.d/networking start

• If you do an HD install and want to restore networking (DHCP) to be enabled at boot, type "update-rc.d networking defaults".

• Getting a live USB install is nice and easy with Unetbootin
  

• VMware users - to fix the KDE resolution, type "fixvmware" before starting X.
  
• Vmware tools and kernel modules compile perfectly on VMWare 6.5.1
  

• If you can't get X to work, first try to autogenerate an xorg.conf by typing "Xorg -configure" and try using the generated conf file. If that bums out, you can revert to VESA by typing "fixvesa".

• Wireless networking in KDE can be started with KnetworkManager (/etc/init.d/NetworkManager)

• Various drivers can be found in /opt/drivers (various madwifi branches, video drivers for Nvidia and HP 2133's).

• Installation of BT4 to HD is similar to BT3. (tip - dont forget to modify /etc/fstab after the install. Change the first line from aufs / aufs .... to the corresponding device and filesystem. For example, on my box it's /dev/sda3 / reiserfs defaults 0 0, as my root partition is on sda3 and i used the resiserfs filesystem).

• The warning message "W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY CB2F6C86F77B1CA9" when "apt-get update" occurs as the Intrepid KDE 3 repos do not use a GPG key. We will eventually host these package in our own repo.

• To generate ssh keys for the first time type "sshd-generate"
  

• Conky takes a while to load.
  

I will be adding items to this list as relevant.

So far we have been receiving outstanding feedback as far as hardware support is concerned. We are looking forward to hearing people's feedback in Shmoo. Rock on!

BackTrack 4 Beta Goodness - Ready for ShmooCon

We've closed our Shmoo edition BT4 image...and its ready to roll..
We will have a local download center in ShmooCon 2009 for people to freely download the image. Look for us at the Pico booth.

The image will be 850+ MB, so get them DVD's, or even better, USB keys ready. We will also have a VMWare image handy.

Get the wallpaper here:

BT4 and SEXY Maltego Transforms

A combined effort from TheX1le and the guys from Paterva has brought some interesting news to the wireless arena.

Maltego now allows you to quickly and easily import wireless network data through the use of Airgraph-NG transforms - bringing in a whole new level of visualization to the field.

Seeing a live demo by Andrew MacPherson blew my mind away, as amazing deductions about the network and its behavior can now be easily understood by the various tranforms.

Very, very exciting stuff!

RFID Tools Revamped, BT4 Beta Pre Release in Shmoocon!

Another teaser...With the kind help of Adam Laurie, we have revamped our RFID tools collection - Check it out.


A few delays prevented us from releasing BT4 on the 31st of Jan...We will have a closed pre-release in Shmoocon, and a public release once Shmoo is over!.

Generating WPA tables with pyrit and CUDA

We're playing around with pyrit and CUDA.

Amazingly , the BT4 Beta LiveCD was stable enough to actually run and generate tables out of the box. X gets nervous and freezes (as expected), so for now, ssh seems the way to go, or simply dust off that old onboard VGA adapter, and leave your preshusssssssssssss Nvidia alone!

We are also working on ATI and Padlock support , stay tuned.