setting up a hack lab

[b0N3z]

On 1/1/2016 at 7:14 PM, sud0nick said:

I've never used xenserver but I'm sure it doesn't come with any ISO's. I hear you can find many different kinds on the high seas if you catch my drift.

Edit: you probably won't be able to run OS X in your virtual environment. It needs Apple hardware or significant modifications to the hardware you're using. I know people have built hackintosh systems but I'm not sure if it can be done easily with a virtual environment.

If you look in the right place, and use the right software with intel hardware and sometimes depending on the OS version you can get an AMD working but thats not easy,  you can get OSX on a virtual machine.  It is not the easiest thing in the world to do but definitely possible with patients.  Hackintosh setups are getting easier and easier to build, its all based on hardware and chipsets.  Apple uses intel based hardware so almost any intel can run OSX, ALMOST ANY not all. Then its just a matter of getting your sound, ethernet(wifi), and video cards fully functional in the OS.  I have a little experience with this but I have not made a OSX VM on windows or linux in a year or two.  Go to youtube and you will find a guy that can do it.

[Ausarian]

I wanted to see what other people where saying about creating a hak lab.. I wondered why nobody has mentioned GNS3 as a solution... if you have some alright hardware you can set up some preety realistic situations that i just couldnt do with just vbox... i make little gns3 files that have different net setups... lets say, a router with an ids with multiple subnets with a desktop os on one subnet, a sinknet and a server etc... whatever you want... its actually preety legit as you can create networks that emulate real enviornments rather then just throw some vulns on your wifi... i have done some tutorials on vimeo on building gns3 networks... if you are going to get some serious hardware... i would say running gns3... you could build some serious gambits...
hope that gives you some more things to study and destroy your time... :D

"Handle Your Business, Don't Let Your Business Handle You" -Mystikal

[DoubleY82]

Planning of building a Hack Lab.

Should I get a get a laptop with install various VMs, thinking of buying a gaming laptop for this with 32GB of ram or

Build a portable VM server. I travel a lot due to work and I would like to have a portable VM server in which I can put in my backpack and go.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Dave-ee Jones]

What's the difference between a portable VM server and a laptop with a few VMs on it..One you can access from the laptop and the other you need to carry around a server and a laptop..

Potentially you could RDP into it from your phone while it's in your bag but..yea, still means you need to have a bag with batteries and things. Also, what OS' would you be carrying around? Do you use a specific OS purely for one tool? Could you put that one tool on another OS, limiting the amount of OS' you use for ease-of-access, and not having to switch VMs constantly?

Might be better setting up a pentesting environment at home with a VPN, using your phone as the client which can send data to your home pentesting environment for analysis, the kind of analysis your phone can't do. Makes it faster and basically only limited by your internet speed/s and your home environment processing power.

Also, no real point in buying a $2-3k laptop just for holding a few VMs on, just get a $300-$1000 laptop that has an i5 (minimum), 8-16GB of RAM (could get an 8GB one and stick another stick in it) and some HDD/SSD space (probably SSD). I sold my laptop with these kind of specs for around $350 AUD, which is like $280 USD. Very cheap.

And also probably best if you don't necromance a forum thread. This one's 7 months old, which isn't overly old but still probably best to open a new one, just so you know for future.

Edited August 21, 2017 by Dave-ee Jones