Here's the hottest Linux distribution of the week, BackTrack 2.0, which was just released today after many months of hard work: "After many months of work, we're finally happy enough with BackTrack to call it v.2.0 Final." - say the BackTrack developers. BackTrack is the world's finest and top rated live Linux distribution focused on penetration testing. It offers more than 300 different applications built especially for security professionals, and no other analysis platform, be it either commercial or freeware, offers the same level of usability with automatic configuration and focus on penetration testing.

BackTrack Live CD was based on many different Linux distros, but the team finally decided to stay with Slackware Linux as the base for BackTrack. It is not just based on Slackware Linux, but it has been maximally optimized and now, it includes kernel and packets configuration to be used by security penetration testers. Also, in order to provide a ready-to-go environment, the BackTrack team applied a lot of patches and automatism.

Highlights of BackTrack 2.0 include:

￭ Updated Linux Kernel 2.6.20, with several patches; ￭ Broadcom based wireless card support; ￭ Most wireless drivers are built to support raw packet injection; ￭ Metasploit2 and Metasploit3 framework integration; ￭ Alignment to open standards and frameworks like ISSAF and OSSTMM; ￭ Redesigned menu structure to assist the novice as well as the pro; ￭ Japanese input support-reading and writing in Hiragana / Katakana / Kanji.

BackTrack Live CD let's you choose, after you login with username "root" and password "toor", the desktop environment you prefer, KDE or Fluxbox. And before you enter the preferred window manager, you can make some tweaks on your graphics card for better performance. The KDE environment (which I've tested) looks impressive and has a very nice, good looking, hot wallpaper and splash screen (you can see them in the screenshots' tour below).

It includes a lot (I think all the security related software are inside this distro) of penetration testing tools, like Information Gathering, Network Mapping, Vulnerability Identification, Privilege Escalation, Maintaining Access, Covering Tracks, Radio Network Analysis, VOIP & Telephony Analysis, Digital Forensics, Reverse Engineering and many, many more.

Please enjoy the first screenshots' tour of BackTrack 2.0: