What is Damn Vulnerable Linux?

Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is a Linux-based tool for IT-Security. It was initiated for training tasks during university lessons by the IITAC (International Institute for Training, Assessment, and Certification) and S²e - Secure Software Engineering in cooperation with the French Reverse Engineering Team. Visit their websites at http://www.iitac.org, http://www.Secure-Software-Engineering.com, and http://www.binary-reverser.org/ . Main authors are Univ.-Doz. Dr. Thorsten Schneider [IITAC, S²e] and Kryshaam [French Reverse Enginering Team].
Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is highly integrated into the community project crackmes.de (http://www.crackmes.de) and is frequently updated with new community provided lessons. Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is your place either to get the latest Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) distribution, to get new lessons, or to submit own lessons based on the Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) training system.

The constant website for Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is located at http://www.damnvulnerablelinux.org . Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is for educational purposes only!

Actually, it is a perverted Linux distribution made to be as insecure as possible. It is collection of IT-Security tools. Additional it includes a fullscaled lesson based environment for Attack & Defense on/for IT systems for self-study or teaching activities during university lectures. It's a Live Linux Distro, which means it runs from a bootable CD in memory without changing the native operating system of the host computer. As well it can be run within virtual machine environments, such as qemu or vmware. There is no need to install a virtual machine if you use the embedded option. Its sole purpose in life is to put as many security tools at your disposal with as much training options as it can. It contains a huge ammount of lessons including lesson description - and solutions if the level has been solved by a community member at crackmes.de.

Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is meant to be used by both novice and professional security personnel but is not ideal for the Linux uninitiated. Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) assumes you know the basics of Linux as most of your work will be done from the command line. If you are completely new to Linux, it's best you stop playing with this system.

By Dr. Thorsten Schneider