De Smet - BackTrack 5 cookbook: over 80 recipes to execute many of the best known and little known penetration testing aspects of BackTrack 5

Willie Pritchett , MBA, is a seasoned developer and security enthusiast who has over 20 years of experience in the IT field. He is currently the Chief Executive at Mega Input Data Services, Inc., a full service database management firm specializing in secure and data-driven application development and also in staffing services. He has worked with state and local government agencies, as well as helped many small businesses reach their goals through technology.

Willie has several industry certifications and currently trains students on various topics, including ethical hacking and penetration testing.

I would like to thank my wife Shavon for being by my side and supporting me as I undertook this endeavor. To my children, Sierra and Josiah, for helping me to understand the meaning of quality time. To my parents, Willie and Sarah, I thank you for providing a work ethic and core set of values that guide me through even the roughest days. A special thanks to all of my now colleagues, associates, and business partners who gave me a chance when I first got started in the IT field; through you a vision of business ownership wasn't destroyed, but allowed to flourish. Finally, I would like to thank all of the reviewers and technical consultants who provided exceptional insight and feedback throughout the course of writing this book.

David De Smet has worked in the software industry since 2007 and is the founder and CEO of iSoftDev Co., where he is responsible for many varying tasks, including but not limited to consultant, customer requirements specification analysis, software design, software implementation, software testing, software maintenance, database development, and web design.

He is so passionate about what he does that he spends inordinate amounts of time in the software development area. He also has a keen interest in the hacking and network security field and provides network security assessments to several companies.

I would like to extend my thanks to Usha Iyer for giving me the opportunity to get involved in this book, as well as my project coordinator Sai Gamare and the whole team behind the book. I thank my family and especially my girlfriend Paola Janahan for the support, encouragement, and most importantly the patience while I was working on the book in the middle of the night.

Daniel W. Dieterle has over 20 years of IT experience and has provided various levels of IT support to companies from small businesses to large corporations. He enjoys computer security topics, has published numerous computer security articles in several magazines, and runs the Cyber Arms Computer Security blog (cyberarms.wordpress.com).

Daniel has previously worked with Packt Publishing as a technical reviewer for the book, BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide . He is also a technical reviewer for Hakin9 IT Security Magazine, eForensics Magazine, The Exploit Magazine, PenTest Magazine, and the Software Developer's Journal.

I would like to thank my beautiful wife and daughters for their support as I worked on this project.

Abhinav Singh is a young information security specialist from India. He has a keen interest in the field of hacking and network security, and has adopted this field as his full-time employment. He is the author of Metasploit Penetration Testing Cookbook , Packt Publishing , a book dealing with pentesting using the most widely used framework.

Abhinav's work has been quoted in several portals and technology magazines. He is also an active contributor of the SecurityXploded community. He can be reached via e-mail at <> and his Twitter handle is @abhinavbom.

I would like to thank my grandparents for their blessings, my parents for their support, and my sister for being my perfect doctor.

Filip Waeytens has been active in the IT security field for over 12 years. During this time he has been active as a security engineer, a security manager, and a penetration tester, working for small and large companies on projects worldwide.

Filip has performed multiple security assessments on banks, telcos, industrial environments, SCADA, and governments. He has also written various security tools, has contributed actively to the Linux BackTrack project, and also trains people in pentesting.

He likes music, movies, and all kinds of brain candy. He lives in Belgium with his wife, two kids, and four chickens.

A big cheer to Muts, Max, and MjM! The old warriors of BackTrack.