Hak5 Linux Distro?

[factgasm]

As Hak5 has become the go to place to learn hacking, how about they launched their own Linux distro - say one based on Kali?

I suspect it would be wildly successful.

What strikes me is that there is a huge interest in hacking and Linux, in the form of Kali, is the first choice for most. However the (apparent) lack of coordination and lack of a network of Main Street one-stop-shops for effective help and support leaves a lot of noobies like me left feeling uncertain and struggling to a get installations working fully on their machines.

At the moment, the best I can manage is running Kali off a USB flash drive (with persistence) but it try as I might I cannot get it to work with either my PC's ethernet or wireless connections.

Sure, I have bought an ALFA wireless adapter as a substitute, but it still leaves me feeling irked that the installation hasn't completed properly.

Just thinking aloud . . .

Edited December 9, 2013 by factgasm

[factgasm]

Recently I have been struggling so hard to get my laptop's internal wireless adapter to work with Kali that I even considered buying a laptop with Kali preinstalled on it instead. Guess what? No-one actually sells them!

Closest I could find is this: http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lctp.html and this http://linuxpreloaded.com/.

There is an online place that does various USB Flash Drives and DVDs here https://www.osdisc.com/products/Linux

But find a place where you can buy a laptop with Kali preinstalled fully working (with or without a Windows dual boot)? I can't one find anywhere.

Hak5 - had you considered adding this to your range of products?

[digip]

A hak5 Linux distro has been mentioned before, but when it comes to Kali or any Linux distro, wireless card compatibility is always an issue with pretty much all linux distros other than just having AP access, if you want injection and monitor mode, you're probably going to want to shell out money for a couple of extra USB wireless cards anyway.

Kali is free, but you're not going to find it sold at Best Buy pre-installed, not for that matter many linux distros sold on laptops pre-installed and dual booted with windows along side of it. Most you might find is a Chromebook running linux which in most cases, will run Kali and work with its wireless card if its in the realtek or atheros families, but again, probably going to want to carry a few USB wifi nic's known to work with the distro of your choice anyway if you want pentesting capabilities vs strictly auto connecting to an AP without monitor mode or injection capabilities, which today, most laptops will work with almost every derivative of debian/ubuntu based distros if not have drivers for your card, which you would setup using the wired nic if need be.

Other than the Pineapple, I don't see them selling pre-installed devices with Kali on them, but read the Kali site for what devices are KNOWN to work with it for compatibility if thats what you truly want. If you want dual boot, install windows FIRST and leave half or so of the HDD partition empty and THEN install Kali with Grub to dual boot afterwards.

http://docs.kali.org/

http://docs.kali.org/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-wireless-driver-issues

[factgasm]

Thanks digip.

Try as I might, I can't get Kali to dual boot on my Windows 8 machine so I've just given up altogether on that now. At best it will only run from a USB stick.

I suspect that Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers have colluded to prevent end users installing operating systems of their choice on their own Windows 8 machines.

I could be wrong.

Edited December 9, 2013 by factgasm

[digip]

If you bought a machine with Windows 8, its probably setup using (preinstalled) UEFI and locked down to some degree. Linux can boot off UEFI and has support for it, but you'd need to 1, shrink the partition of windows 8 to make space for Kali and 2, install Kali to the remaining space, and 3, probably disable UEFI secure boot which might break windows 8. Windows 8 can be installed to not need the UEFI Secure boot, but if its pre-installed, then you need to boot off external media. Windows 8 machines aren't the best for dual booting unless installing both yourself so you can setup Win8 to not use the secure boot, which is whats probably causing you your issues(is my guess). Easier, setup VMware in Windows 8, run it from a Virtual machine, use USB Wifi cards(since you can't pass the physical wireless cards to the VM, only the wired Ethernet NIC).

http://docs.kali.org/installation/dual-boot-kali-with-windows

http://forums.kali.org/showthread.php?271-How-to-EFI-install-Kali-Linux&highlight=uefi

Edited December 9, 2013 by digip

[factgasm]

I've been down the VM Ware route already an gave up on that.

Installed Oracle VM Ware and used it to boot Kali.

Here's what I noticed:

If, within the Kali desktop, I clicked root > shutdown then EVERYTHING was lost next time I started the machine back up.

If I click the red Close button (top right on Oracle VM Ware) it gave me an three options. The first (save the machine's state) put the virtual machine into standby but if I restarted my physical EVERYTHING was lost. The other two options (power down and something else) meant EVERYTHING was lost even without exiting VM WARE.

I was very patient with it, tried reading all the forums for help but couldn't find anything to explain how to shut down the virtual machine such that I could shut down the physical machine and have the virtual machine resume in the same state next time I booted up.

As my brother is currently in a local hospital ward dying of cancer you'll understand that I haven't got the time to be messed about like this.

Edited December 9, 2013 by factgasm

[digip]

If booting the VM off a DVD ISO, its not installed, its just booting off the media in the VM, so no persistence. Easier to download one of their pre-made VM's, or "installing" it in VMware, but if on Windows 8, your VMware needs to be at least Vmware 8.06 or later for SUPPORT of UEFI. UEFI and dual booting after windows 8 was already pre-installed can be a pain in the ass to fix, and you may have to reinstall windows 8, after disabling secure boot in the bios/UEFI setup, and google for setting up windows 8 without UEFI support, which it wants by default, but I believe there is a cmd line switch to bypass this on manual installs for Windows 8.

When Win8 first came out, I couldn't get it to install on VMware because it wouldn't boot without UEFI, and I had to upgrade my VMware to a version that had UEFI Bios emulation support. In Windows 8 VMware, you may have to tell it to disable UEFI if it enables it by default* for virtual machines, but I don't own a Win8 machine with VMware to test or setup myself to see how it would work. Sure there are Videos or other tutorials out there for getting them to play nice with each other. I don't think at this time Kali supports secure boot out of the box though, but the one kali forum link may help getting it to work and setting up the grub chainloader to call the win8 EFI file so it shows on the menu for both OS's.

Personally, I'd use an older laptop or workstation and do a native install of just Kali on it, vs trying to make it work and dual boot with a Windows 8 setup.

[vector]

change the uefi boot mode settings to insecure, enable legacy boot mode, change the boot device priority settings to how you like it. when your computer starts up you should have an option for boot menu or similar, probably will say f12 or f2 this should bring up the legacy bootloader that will show something like "hard drive" "cd/dvdrw" etc etc your kali or whatever other distro that youve burned to the usb drive wont boot as a usb device but as a cd/dvd drive. so choose to boot from cd/dvd drive in the legacy boot menu and it should go right to the kali or whatever distros menu. from there you can choose to install or start it in live mode etc etc. then from there yo ucan gparted or whatever you you like to partition the drive for your kali linux.