History

BackTrack is a Live DVD Linux distribution developed specifically for penetration testing. In the Live DVD format, you can use BackTrack directly from the DVD without installing it to your machine. BackTrack can also be installed to the hard disk and used as a regular operating system.

BackTrack is a merger between three different live Linux penetration testing distributions IWHAX, WHOPPIX, and Auditor. In its current version (4.0), BackTrack is based on Ubuntu Linux distribution version 8.10.

As of July 19, 2010, BackTrack 4 has been downloaded by more than 1.5 million users.