BackTrack 6 replaced by Kali Linux 1.0

BackTrack is dead. Long live Kali Linux.

Since 2006, Offensive Security has developed and distributed BackTrack, a Linux distro developed with the latest and greatest penetration testing tools preinstalled. In the years since it was introduced, Backtrack has become the most widely used penetration testing framework in the world.

The team over at Offensive Security have decided to discontinue the Backtrack moniker, replacing it with Kali Linux 1.0. They had this to say about the name change on the official Kali blog:

Hindu Goddess of time and change? Philippine martial art? Cool word in Swahili? None of the above. “Kali” is simply the name we came up with for our new distribution. Why change the name in the first place? With all these significant changes in our distribution, we felt that we needed to convey this in the project name. “BackTrack 6″ didn’t do justice to our efforts in the past year, and wouldn’t convey our new message to our users. What’s the new message? We’ll let you find out for yourself.

Perhaps the most significant change is that Kali is built on Debian, rather than Ubuntu, as was the case with Backtrack.  This also means a shift away from reliance on the /pentest folder for access to your favorite tools; all applications are accessible via the $PATH and can therefore be called anywhere on the system.  Early reviews of Kali are positive, with users praising the stability as well as the new features such as the hardware hacking tools and the  Top 10 Security Tools folder which contains  easy access to commonly used programs like Wireshark, Metasploit Framework, Burp Suite, Aircrack-ng, and John the Ripper.

Get your hands on Kali today by heading over to http://www.kali.org/downloads/