Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide

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How to Get BackTrack 5 Running
Now that you have a basic idea of what BackTrack is and why it is used, it’s time to install 
BackTrack on our box and get things going. There are many ways you can get BackTrack up 
and running. I install BackTrack on a virtualization software such as VMware or virtual box. 
Personally, I am a fan of virtual box, since it does not take much of my computer’s memory. 
Therefore, what we will learn next is how to install BackTrack on virtual box.
Installing BackTrack on Virtual Box
There are times when we need to switch between operating systems rapidly and we need our 
BackTrack running alongside another OS like Windows or Red Hat Linux. One advantage of 
doing this is it gives us more accessibility. For doing this you need to download VM Virtual Box, 
which is a freely available tool.
Step 1
—After downloading and installing virtual box on to your PC, click on the “New” 
button. A dialogue box will appear where you would need to type the name of the “OS,” the 
“Version,” and the operating system type. In my case the name would be “BackTrack,” the 
OS “Linux,” and the version “Ubuntu.”

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Step 2
—The next step would be to allocate the RAM; it is recommended that you allocate at 
least 1024 MB (1 GB) for BackTrack to run perfectly.
Step 3
—Next, choose to create a virtual drive and then in the next window select the hard drive 
type as VDI (Virtual Disk Image).

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Step 4
—In the next step, you have to choose if you want the hard disk to be dynamically allo-
cated or have a fixed size. If you have enough space on your hard disk, you might want to 
choose the first option. Nevertheless, it’s up to you.

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Step 5
—Next, choose the name of your virtual hard drive and allocate the size of the hard disk.

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Step 6
—So, now when the virtual hard disk has been created and other settings are selected, 
load the BackTrack that was downloaded onto the virtual box and click “Start”.
That’s all we need to do. We now have BackTrack installed on our virtual box.