Backtrack is the most popularly used security distro used while during pentests. While we can partition our harddisk, install this OS and dual boot with our default OS; things can be made simpler by running BackTrack VM within our default OS. Using a security distro in a VM gives us few advantages like, portability & ability to quickly restore/duplicate the instances as required.
Running Backtrack
BackTrack4 VM can be downloaded from the backtrack site (link at the end of the post) and to run the VM, we need the free VMWare Player.
Install the VMWare Player and open the BT VM with it. We are good to go with the default configuration unless we have more RAM to spare (Its recommended to provide 512MB of RAM if you have around 2GB).
Adjust Backtrack VM RAM
Default Credentials
Backtrack VM comes with the default login credentials (which can be changed later, ofcourse)
bt login: root Password: toor . . . root@bt:~# startx
We should be able to see the BackTrack OS up and running by this time. If you face any difficulties with the screen resolution, install/upgrade your VMWare tools.
BackTrack VM Up and Running
Change Default Credentials
Once the OS is loaded, access the terminal from the taskbar and use the ‘passwd’ command to change the password.
bt~# passwd bt~# New Password : ****** bt~# Re-enter Password: ******
Enable Networking to Access Internet
Many a times internet might not work at the first shot. If it doesn’t do as mentioned below.
- First find out the IP address/Default Gateway of you the HOST PC (Assuming that it’s an Windows OS, do ‘ipconfig’ in DOS Terminal)
- Choose any arbitrary IP address, should be in the range of the IP of the host, and ensure that its not used.
- In the BackTrack Terminal, type the following commands
bt~# ifconfig eth0 up bt~# /etc/init.d/networking start
Once you have BackTrack running and Internet enabled, you are all set to use the tools bundled with this OS.
| Backtrack VM Download Info | |
|---|---|
| App Name | Backtrack VM Download |
| License | free |
| Type | OS |
| App URL |
 |
| More Info | link |
VMWare Player Download (Free):
