Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Debian Security Linux

Kali Linux, Successor of the BackTrack Penetration Testing Distro, Launched 59

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the no-one-is-safe dept.
mask.of.sanity writes "Kali, the sixth installment of the BackTrack operating system has been launched. The platform is a favorite of hackers and penetration testers and has been entirely rebuilt to become more secure, transparent and customizable. Metasploit too has been rebuilt to be more stable with an optional noob-friendly interface. Kali even works on ARM devices and comes ready to go for your Raspberry Pi." The big new feature is that it's been repackaged as a flavor of Debian, instead of using their own custom packaging magic.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Kali Linux, Successor of the BackTrack Penetration Testing Distro, Launched More

Kali Linux, Successor of the BackTrack Penetration Testing Distro, Launched

Comments Filter:

  • IPX over Kali (Score:4, Funny)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @10:59AM (#43159539) Homepage Journal
    The last time I checked, Kali [wikipedia.org] was some sort of VPN to tunnel IPX (NetWare protocol) over IP. It appears to have been popular when Warcraft II was around. Oh well, there are only so many names for things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yannic ( 609749 )

      The last time I checked, Kali [wikipedia.org] was some sort of VPN to tunnel IPX (NetWare protocol) over IP. It appears to have been popular when Warcraft II was around. Oh well, there are only so many names for things.

      Kali/Kahn. Sluggish over a modem, but incredibly fun, and much easier to set up than making Real Life friends with parents that would let them lug the computer around for a LAN party!

      \/\/\/

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
      last I checked, Kali was some sort of Hindu goddess with 4 arms, that likes to stick her tongue out. That might not be as old as a VPN tunnel though...

      (After googling "kali," why did you pick that of all things as prior-name?)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
      Kali was the succesor to iFrag. Before iFrag was iDoom. I was an iDoom beta tester. Am I dating myself? Sigh..

    • Used to play so much Duke Nukem over Kali on my 56k modem back in the day.

    • I actually still have my Kali reg codes to this day. (kali.net)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep, I thought this was about that old Kali [kali.net] program. I still have my serial number!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rmstar ( 114746 )

      The last time I checked, Kali was some sort of VPN to tunnel IPX (NetWare protocol) over IP. It appears to have been popular when Warcraft II was around. Oh well, there are only so many names for things.

      They could have called it Cali [wikipedia.org] Linux, which would have been a little more original and also fitting.

  • FFS stick with one name. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @11:06AM (#43159619) Homepage

    FFS stick with one name.

    Isn't this the distro that went through WHAX, Whoppix, etc. before becoming BackTrack?

    Pick one damn name and stick with it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      and it was Auditor/remote-exploit before that. Max Moser was primary in that, it was very good (not that the successors were not).

    • Re:FFS stick with one name. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @11:34AM (#43159925)

      Pick one damn name and stick with it.

      Sounds like they need to stop backtracking on names.

      • Don't worry. They'll eventually (air)crack the code for a proper name and find one they can (n)map their system to.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          *Snort* Yeah right, it seems their Kismet to be un-Able to find a name that no one has a BeEF with.

    • Right. If you are going to change things completely at least use the same name so I won't know it is different!

    • This rename actually makes sense. Previously, with BackTrack, it was almost an LFS approach. Installing it on a hard disk was a complex, multi-step process that could go wrong as easily as it could go right. It involved booting the live CD, creating all the partitions/filesystems on your HD, mounting them, and then copying all files from the running live CD over to your HD manually. Manually, as in "cp -a". Then you had to configure the bootloader, again manually, to make sure it would boot from the HD

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ledow ( 319597 )

        Heard the same for Whax (Let's base on Slax because it's easier to..... blah blah blah), Whoppix (let's base on Knoppix because it's easier to.... blah blah blah) and Backtrack (let's start again with LFS this time [I think, correct me if I'm wrong]... blah blah blah). And now they've gone around again. I've never seen one distro go through so many base distros in all the time I've been using Linux. It's just ridiculous.

        You know what? I just want to run the damn tools, whether from LiveCD or install. I

    • What's wrong with dictionary hacking your own name?

  • Sounds like a movie (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bob the Super Hamste ( 1152367 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @11:26AM (#43159835) Homepage
    Penetration testing with a Raspberry pi, sounds like a movie to me.

  • kali? (Score:3)

    by bcong ( 1125705 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @11:38AM (#43159973)
    kali /käl/ The most terrifying goddess, wife of Shiva. She is typically depicted as naked, old, and hideous. She is sometimes associated with empowerment. To be fair this is a great name, after all to most IA/security folks I have to deal with... backtrack truly is terrifying to them
  • ...the more you are able to hear.

    Sounds like the best motto or quip a Linux distro ever had.

  • Its a great project but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @12:49PM (#43160779) Journal

    One thing that I have never understood is why is Backtrack/Kali a distro in the first place. Why not just release a set of packages with a meta package to require the others if you chose deb, or rpm, if you want to run on Ubuntu/Debian/RH/Centos or as like a Slackware diskset with tag files if you go that way?

    I can understand most users not wanted to plot the packages into their regular install they actively use. There are lots of tools that need setuid etc and specific versions of libraries you might not want around on the system for other reasons. Still if it was just a package set it would make it easy to install in a Linux container or chroot environment without having to run in a full VM. It would make it much easier to install a subset of the functionality if you have domain specific needs on your main install as well. At the same time it would make it no harder to install on a VM or dedicated portable, just install the distro than slap the packages on. Its not as if anyone doing anything useful with msf etc can't manage to do installpkg kali-*.tgz, or apt get kali or whatever.

    Don't take the is post as knocking the project; I really mean it as just asking a question and stating some reasons why I think a different approach might make some sense. This is an amazingly well put together tool. I am sure there is a ton of effort that went in continues to into getting all those packages built and playing nice with each other. Lots of the code and build scripts etc for those tools are not exactly what you would ordinarily call release ready. Having tried to package some of them myself along the way I fully aware of this. I know the maintainers also have to put lots of effort into making sure they don't package anything that really is malicious too; which is no small task.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The reason for a completely different build is because they change the OS to be even more secure than what a standard distro would be. You can add the backtrack (kali) packages manually if you want to install them into a standard distro though.

      http://hacktalk.net/*nix-support/adding-backtrack-repositories-to-ubuntu/

    • Re:Its a great project but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zero__Kelvin ( 151819 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @01:07PM (#43161033) Homepage

      "One thing that I have never understood is why is Backtrack/Kali a distro in the first place. Why not just release a set of packages with a meta package to require the others if you chose deb, or rpm, if you want to run on Ubuntu/Debian/RH/Centos or as like a Slackware diskset with tag files if you go that way?"

      Because they need a fully customized configuration with complete control over so many things in order for them to work properly. The kernel has to be configured "just so" or packages will not work. The network interfaces default to disabled at boot time. Almost everything needs root privileges to run. The goals for a secure server or desktop OS and Kali are so radically divergent that it makes absolutely no sense to try to mix the two.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Additionally some of the custom drivers for things like packet injection are a right pain to switch back and forth on a daily use system.

        • This. I had a problem with packet injection on my RTL wifi card on my 'normal' Debian distro. The solutions online were to revert to an older version of the driver, recompile drivers. But then that killed my ethernet card because it wasn't compatible with something.

          BackTrack has everything configured and setup so stuff like this just works(tm)

  • Can someone please explain to me why one would use this distro instead of just installing packages with Debian? I've never understood the appeal.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @01:52PM (#43161573)

      "Can someone please explain to me why one would use this distro instead of just installing packages with Debian? I've never understood the appeal"

      See the reply to a similar question further up.

      The short answer is: because all the privileges and configs have been pre-set-up so everything just works. You would have to do an awful lot of diddling a standard *nix distro in order to do the same thing. This way, you just install. Somebody else has already done the (considerable amount of) work.

Slashdot Top Deals

One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis

Close