BT4 kini menggunakan Debian sebagai basis dan memanfaatkan repositori Ubuntu, ia dapat senantiasa di-update atau di-upgrade. Bila di-sinkronisasi dengan repositori yang disediakan BackTrack, ia akan selalu up-to-date.
Dalam pengumuman resminya tim pengembang menulis antara lain: The Remote Exploit Development Team is happy to announce the release of BackTrack 4 Beta. We have taken huge conceptual leaps with BackTrack 4, and have some new and exciting features. The most significant of these changes is our expansion from the realm of a Pentesting LiveCD towards a full blown "Distribution,..".
Fitur-fitur baru termasuk:
* the Kernel was updated to version 2.6.28.1 bringing better hardware support;
* BackTrack 4 Beta can now be booted over a network, using PXE supported cards;
* SAINT EXPLOIT, a network vulnerability assessment tool, and MALTEGO 2.0.2, an Open Source intelligence and forensic app, are now included;
* the latest mac80211 wireless injection patches were applied along with speed improvements for rtl8187;
* Pico e12 and e16 cards are now 100% functional with native support, enabling BackTrack 4 to take advantage of everything these incredibly small devices have to offer;
* Unicornscan, an information gathering and correlation engine is fully functional and features a web front end and postgress logging support;
* RFID support;
* Pyrit CUDA support and many more new and updated tools.
