14 DAY TRIAL // Backtrack was a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing and it's no longer maintained. In fact, this OS was so successful that it's still being downloaded and used even today, despite the fact that it's no longer maintained.
Backtrack was not the only security-oriented distribution, but the wealth of applicationS provided by the developers ensured its supremacy. It remained one of the most downloaded Linux distributions for a long time, even after it wasn't maintained anymore.
The last update for Backtrack, dubbed R3, was made back in August 2012, but the developers from Offensive Security soon rebased their operating system on Debian and re-released it under the name Kali.
This is what the official website said about the OS. "BackTrack is a Linux-based penetration testing arsenal that aids security professionals in the ability to perform assessments in a purely native environment dedicated to hacking. Regardless if you're making BackTrack you Install BackTrack, boot it from a Live DVD or thumbdrive, the penetration distribution has been customized down to every package, kernel configuration, script and patch solely for the purpose of the penetration tester."
The interesting thing about Backtrack is that it provided the necessary tools for all type of users, either novice or professionals. The fact that anyone could pick up this Linux distro and test the strength of their own wireless network with a just a few clicks, for example, made it a success.
We are now celebrating the fact that Backtrack R3 has just passed the 1 million downloads mark and it's still rising. We know that it's no longer supported, but at the same time, it's also something that users want to download. Softpedia is one of the last places that you can download the latest version and we'll keep it online as long as it's necessary.
We hope to see Kali succeed, just like its predecessor and we hope to see this distro pass the 1 million mark as well. The latest version is already one of the most downloaded ISOs on our website, so we have high hopes for it.
In the meantime, if you liked Backtrack, you should give Kali a change. It's built by the same developers, but it packs all newest packages, making it much better than any of the older versions of Backtrack.
If you do decide to get Backtrack from Softpedia, for old time's sake, please remember that it's no longer maintained and you should adjust your expectations accordingly.