The first thing to remember about a fresh install of Backtrack are the default installed credentials for the root account:

root
toor

Nice and simple – right? But sometimes (often in my case) you’ll want to change the root password (especially as you’ll be spending so much time as a root user). You do remember the username and password you used when you installed backtrack right? So, open up a terminal and type the following:

sudo su
whoami
passwd

’sudo su’ will change you into the Super User account, your system will ask you for your password (current password of the account you are using). ‘whoami’ will tell you the account you are using – should be ‘root’. Last but not least ‘passwd’ will let you change the root password, enter it twice and away you go.