Information Assurance: BackTrack 4

• Wireshark
• Ettercap
• Metasploit
• Kismet
• Hydra
• RFMON
• Ophcrack
• Hydra
• Cisco OCS Mass Scanner
• Quypt Terminal Emulator
• others to be added...

Default Log-in: root

Default Log-in password: toor

GUI Start (from shell): startx

Start Networking (from shell): /etc/init.d/networking start

Backtrack 4. is a security-enhanced operating system. This means it includes utilities for packet sniffing, network mapping, privilege escalation, digital forensics, vulnerability scanning, etc. Among the utilities included are: Wireshark, Ettercap, Metasploit, Kismet, Nmap, Hydra, RFMON, and many others.

It it has a very active community, with forums, a blog, updates, and very instructive How-To Guides.

Backtrack can be run on Windows machines by downloading the  VMware image and playing on VMware Player.