BackTrack is a free, live Linux operating system with over 300 of the best security penetration testing tools built in. It is neatly organized by category to quickly locate any tool and covers an extremely wide array of applications.
Download available at:
If you are using Windows XP it is important to have the Recovery Console installed on your computer in the event that your Windows installation becomes corrupt and you cannot boot into Windows any more. After installation the Recovery Console briefly appears before loading Windows and gives you the option to log in to a basic command prompt to try and repair any issues that are preventing Windows from loading.
Recovery console installation procedure:
1. Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type “d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons” where d is the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive.
4. A Windows Setup Dialog Box appears. The Windows Setup Dialog Box describes the Recovery Console option. To confirm the installation, click Yes.
5. Restart the computer. The next time that you start your computer, “Microsoft Windows Recovery Console” appears on the startup menu.
For complete details on the Recovery Console and a list of supported commands see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 307654 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654).
Like the name suggests, Open Perl IDE is an open source, free Perl integrated development environment for Windows.
When files are put online they are sometimes compressed to make the transfer of the file that much quicker and use less bandwidth or simply to put multiple files in a single file. RAR is a compression format that is sometimes used to do this. There are multiple tools available to extract the data or files from a RAR file. Due to the proprietary nature of the format there are free tools that are able to unarchive RAR files but not archive with RAR. If you need to archive files there are many other open, more popular non-proprietary formats available such as ZIP compression that should be used instead.
Linux: Unrar
In Ubuntu the default archive opener “File Roller” can extract RAR files. There is a free command line version available for Linux also.
Installation:
sudo apt-get install unrar
Usage:
unrar x filename.rar
Usage with a password protected file:
unrar -p x filename.rar
OS X: Unrar X
http://www.unrarx.com/
Windows: 7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/
Firebug is a handy web development or research tool that can be used to analyze each individual component of a web page. From the home page:
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
CHM (Compiled HTML Help) files can be natively read with Windows but not in Linux or OS X. Fortunately there are applications for both Linux and OS X that can read these files.
Linux: kchmviewer
http://www.kchmviewer.net/
Install:
sudo apt-get install kchmviewer
OS X: Chmox
http://chmox.sourceforge.net/
When working in Linux it is occasionally necessary to open a terminal window in a specific directory. The easiest way to do this is with the “nautilus-open-terminal” extension. After installing this it creates an additional option after right-clicking on a directory that says “Open in Terminal”. This will open up a new terminal window at the selected directory. This is only Linux operating systems that use the Gnome window manager such as Ubuntu.
Installation:
sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal
Xubuntu is a smaller, lighter version of the Ubuntu linux operating system that uses the Xcfe window manager instead of Gnome. Xubuntu works especially well with older computers such as those with triple-digit megahertz processors. The user interface is simplified to make the most commonly used applications as easily accessible as possible.
After the initial installation of Xubuntu 7.10 and applying the latest updates on my test computer it only used 1.5 GB of hard drive space and 83.7 MB of memory when fully loaded.
If you are installing Xubuntu it is recommended to have the computer plugged in to the Internet so it can get the latest system updates. When I installed Xubuntu the computer was not plugged in to the Internet so it was not able to get the latest updates until I manually updated the settings. This can be done by going to Applications –> System –> Software Sources. Under the Ubuntu Software tab check the following:
Under the Updates tab check the following:
Xubuntu can be booted as a live CD so that the operating system can be demoed before installation. Xubuntu can be downloaded at: