a4apphack

This Python script by the author ‘sickness’ updates many of the tools present in Backtrack suite, which otherwise would’ve to be updated manually.

Get the script

Screenshot

Backtrack5 Update Script

Source: backtrack-linux.org

Backtrack5 Update Script Info
App Name	Backtrack5 Update Script
License	free
Type	code
App URL
More Info	link

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

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Skipfish is an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments.

Installation on Ubuntu/BackTrack (via Redspin)

Use the following commands in the terminal windows to install and run Skipfish. Replace OUTPUT_FOLDER and TARGETSITE with the domain name and the target’s URL respectively. Also change the wget URL to the URL of the latest version of Skipfish download available.

wget http://skipfish.googlecode.com/files/skipfish-1.29b.tgz
tar zxvf skipfish-1.01b.tgz
sudo apt-get install libidn11-dev
cd skipfish
make
cp dictionaries/default.wl skipfish.wl
./skipfish -o OUTPUT_FOLDER http://www.TARGETSITE.com

Trial Run

Installed SkipFish and ran on the target site, specs below.

Guest OS : BackTrack4 VM

Host OS : Windows Vista

RAM : 512MB

Application Size : Medium ( < 1000 Unique Pages )

Internet Speed : 1 MBPS

Skipfish Verbose

Skipfish displays the scan run statistics continuously during the run. Once the scan run is complete, we get to see the scan summary (shown in the below screenshot).

Skipfish Console (Click to Enlarge)

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Evolution of Windows and Linux Machines

Pencil is a tool created with Mozilla Gecko engine, which is used for creating mockup screens for designing prototypes.
This is an opensource tool and works on any platform that Firefox 3 can.

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Dropbox allows users to store, share and sync their files across multiple computers via multiple sources. The sync is transparent and continuous. The best part is the process runs in the background and it consumes very less amount of RAM.

Dropbox download is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Setting up Dropbox is very easy. We need to install dropbox, then

1. Create a Dropbox account.
2. Specify the Dropbox location in your PC (All the files and folders are sync’d with your online dropbox)

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