BackTrack Reborn - Kali Linux - A Teaser into the Future

BackTrack Reborn – Kali Linux

Originally, BackTrack Linux was developed for our personal use but over the past several years, it has grown in popularity far greater than we ever imagined. We still develop BackTrack for ourselves because we use it every day. However, with growth and a huge user base, we have an obligation to ourselves, our users, and the open source community to create the best distribution we possibly can.

With this in mind, about a year ago a bunch of us at Offensive Security started thinking about the future of BackTrack and brainstormed about the features and functionality we’d like to see in the next and future revisions. One of our main topics of conversation was the option of swapping out our custom development environment for a fully fledged Debian-compliant packaging and repository system.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, but little did we know the world of hurt and pain we were getting ourselves into. This single decision concerning the future path of BackTrack brought  with it so much power and flexibility that it has changed the face of our distribution.

What’s happened in the past year? We have been quietly developing the necessary infrastructure and laying the foundation for our newest penetration testing distribution as well as building over 300 Debian compliant packages and swearing in 8 different languages. These changes brought with them an incredible amount of work, research and learning but are also leading us down the path to creating the best, and most flexible, penetration testing distribution we have ever built, dubbed “Kali”.

Its said, the user experience remains pretty much the same. Users & Students should feel little difference between Kali and BackTrack.

A new version of PWB with needed updates will be available, in the next 6 months.

So How does this affect the Offensive Security courses?

So when is new version of BackTrack goodness hitting the internet?

We wont tell, yet. After all, that *is* the definition of a “teaser”. All we can say for now, is that we are also waiting for it & Its well on the way to completion, and hope to have its initial release out soon.