building a testing lab

[dred]

I wanted to hear some ideas on building a lab for security testing, please post your ideas here please include furniture and maby even a few links to the items used..This lab can be used for testing exploits, hardware and hacking in general.. I look forward to seeing what you come up with..

[Sparda]

Get some tables, perhaps some chairs, a bunch of computers and perhaps a couple of high end ones. Stick them all on there own network, make the switch easily accessible and perhaps get a spare one so if you need to do two things at once you can have two seperate networks running at once.

[PoyBoy]

Air conditioner!!!! No furnace can match the Btu's of 25 pc's!!!

So, ya, you need tables chairs, various switching equptment (cheap is fine usually), old pcs to run as servers, etc, KVM switches, monitors, And a swivel chairs that can slide around from computer to computer

[metatron]

22 rack-mounted servers, 10 workstations, 8 to 15 Cisco routers, 5 to 10 AP, 4 Cisco switches, 2 16 port KVM’s, 2 Dell displays, 2 keyboards, 2 mice and a selection of VOIP phones.

Workstation one to eight, Windows XP.

Workstation nine, Ubuntu.

Workstation ten, SUSE.

Servers one to six, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Server’s seven to ten SUSE Enterprise server.

Server’s eleven and twelve OpenBSD

Server thirteen FreeBSD.

Server fourteen and fifteen, Debian.

Server sixteen Windows Server 2003.

Server seventeen, Microsoft Storage Server 2003

Server eighteen Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Server nineteen Microsoft SQL Server

Server twenty Microsoft ISA Server 2006.

Server twenty one Microsoft BizTalk Server.

Server twenty two, Windows 2000.

Buy two racks and mount everything and just have the two displays, keyboard and mice on a desk.

[cooper]

I would say get a bunch of Mini-ITXes. They're cheap and pretty much self-contained. Since it's pretty much a fixed package, you can easily replace one should it fail, and they're cheap to both purchase and operate. They're not very high performance, but that should give you a bigger window to test race conditions.

You can fit 2 Mini-ITXes in a 1u server chassis that won't be very deep either so chances are you can get away with a distribution rack rather than a server rack which should save additional space. Personally, I'd recommend an Open Frame rack precisely because of this.

As for the hardware to attach everything, well, that's pretty much dependant on just what you want to research specifically, so I'll leave that as an excersize to you.

If you really need the performance, or want gigabit ethernet and don't want to either sacrifice the single PCI slot for a dedicated card or get the new Mini-ITX that has one of these on board as they are more expensive and not that easy to come by, you can get an Asus-made Mini-ITX form-factor Mobo that takes an Intel Core Duo CPU. It's got the DC-to-DC power supply on board, but you will spend more to get a complete computer than you would with a Mini-ITX that sports the regular Via-made CPU.

I lack the imagination to figure out what more you could need.

An alternative to the above would be to get the biggest, meanest box you can find, stuff it chock-full with CPUs and memory, and run several VMWare (or Bochs) Virtual Machines in there.

You could combine the above two options by running VMWare on a Mini-ITX, but I'm pretty sure you'll consider it too slow for your purposes.

[pseudobreed]

An alternative to the above would be to get the biggest, meanest box you can find, stuff it chock-full with CPUs and memory, and run several VMWare (or Bochs) Virtual Machines in there.

You really dont even need that mean of a machine. VMWare can flex "hardware" per virtual machine.

I have one desktop running about 4 virtual os's in natural sandbox fashion and one laptop that I test from that dual boots XP Pro and Auditor (Because Im trying to learn more Linux, yet rarely boot to it).

For the OS's, I have 2 XP's (Pro & Home), 2003 Server, and Server 2000. Each one except the Home is running some version of Apache/MySQL/MSSQL/Updates.

The best part of virtual machines is that you can save the OS at different stages. This way if you mess something up, you can revert back to the original.

Also, Im pretty sure VMWare has a free player now or something of the like. You can create your own virtual machine and pass it off to other people to stress test, etc.

[PoyBoy]

Metatron has spoken.

[a5an0]

22 rack-mounted servers, 10 workstations, 8 to 15 Cisco routers, 5 to 10 AP, 4 Cisco switches, 2 16 port KVM’s, 2 Dell displays, 2 keyboards, 2 mice and a selection of VOIP phones.

Workstation one to eight, Windows XP.

Workstation nine, Ubuntu.

Workstation ten, SUSE.

Servers one to six, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Server’s seven to ten SUSE Enterprise server.

Server’s eleven and twelve OpenBSD

Server thirteen FreeBSD.

Server fourteen and fifteen, Debian.

Server sixteen Windows Server 2003.

Server seventeen, Microsoft Storage Server 2003

Server eighteen Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Server nineteen Microsoft SQL Server

Server twenty Microsoft ISA Server 2006.

Server twenty one Microsoft BizTalk Server.

Server twenty two, Windows 2000.

Buy two racks and mount everything and just have the two displays, keyboard and mice on a desk.

your flair never ceases to amaze me........ this list is second only to your backpack

[PoyBoy]

True that is...

[DeGrijze]

All you realy need is some neat computer hardware a internet connection and a group of people with respect for its fellow man but still know how to have fun in live.

The group of people that wil run the lab is the most inportant factor.

Gerard

[anyedie]

first: metatron.. i love you.

second: im doing the same thing. I've got two computers running both windows (i change the versions often) one just as a workstation and the other as a server. Then I have differnt accounts set up with differnt security things. its fun and cheaP!

[rFayjW98ciLoNQLDZmFRKD]

to save space, you can even remoce the mobo, nic, HDD and PSU out of each PC and mount them one ontop of each other (using spacers). This will save space, make it somewhat portable, and run a bit cooler.

[OtterFox]

Yea I love metatron's lists too.

I would also sugest a few high gain wireless things for hacking people 10km way lol.

[PoyBoy]

God/Jesus/Allah/Whomever of Whatever you believe in knows best, but Metatron knows better.

[OtterFox]

God/Jesus/Allah/Whomever of Whatever you believe in knows best, but Metatron knows better.

So true :)

[PoyBoy]

I only speak the truth :P

[dred]

I like the ideas so far and Metatrons ideas are only a fantasy to me unless someone here wants to lend the money for it . ak ak ak!! maby you guys could through some ideas for the HOBO lab. now that we have heard some of the more expensive versions of building a lab..get ghetto on me!!!

[PoyBoy]

Use corrugated cardboard boxes as tables, and dumpsterdive for computers and shit like that

[bing0]

moinsen,

get yourself 1 or 2 boxes with plenty of ram and www.vmware.com

word.

TOM

[metatron]

It usually works better and cheaper to have a load of shit boxes and hit up bit torrent for operating systems/ software, they will be used to learn so I don’t see why you should have to pay for anything, if you can’t afford to.

You should be able to get everything for free with in a month, from dumpster diving.

[dred]

thanks for all your input i just wanted to here some of your ideas, and spark a little creativty.. respect G lol!!

[PoyBoy]

w00t

[deathwarder]

if you get two computers, two widescreen monitors a piece, you can run eight instances of vmware at a good size.

[armadaender]

<bittorrent image>

w00t

I second that w00t with another w00t.