Wednesday, March 27, 2013

HOWTO : BackBox 3.01 on ASUS Sabertooth X79

BackBox Linux project was born in Italy in 2010 and it is created by Raffaele Forte University of Calabria computer engineering student and security enthusiast.

The current version is 3.01 and it is released on Jan 23, 2013. This version is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It comes with windows manager Xfce4.

BackBox Linux is a penetration test Linux distribution. You can even install her packages (including BackBox menu) to your existing running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS box by adding her PPA repository.

It comes with about 60 pre-installed penetration testing tools but they are usable and well known. The tools are well tested by developers before they are released. Other tools can be installed by yourself or from the Ubuntu repository.

Using BackBox is just like using Ubuntu. It is easy to use and maintain.

Installation

If you have nVidia display card(s), you should add "nomodeset" to the boot menu of the Live DVD/USB by pressing "Tab" button on the keyboard. Once it is installed, the nVidia display card driver is installed automatically and the version is 304.48. Do not try to install other version of the nVidia driver yourself as other packages in the Ubuntu repository is broken.

There is no pain to install BackBox on ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard even it comes with UEFI BIOS. You just press "F8" when the computer is boot up to activate the boot menu. Select normal option, do not choose the UEFI option of DVD/USB. Then, it will boot fine.

To burn the bootable BackBox USB pendrive on Linux, you need to use Ubuntu's "Startup Disk Creator" (usb-creator-gtk) or UNetbootin.

Customization

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install galculator gedit radiotray axel-kapt libreoffice preload


Update Penetration Tools

Go to the menu, click "Update" and select the tools for update. It is very simple and easy as well as without pain. When you are updating "cvechecker", make sure you see the word "finish" or "done" before closing the terminal window as it needs time to download the data file. If you have slow internet connection, the download seems halt, but be patient until it is finished.

Performance Tuning

You may consider to add "noatime" and "nodiratime" to the /etc/fstab. Make sure you have no typo or your box will not boot properly.



That's all! See you.