Hands on Hacking

Chapter 3Building Your Hack Box

This chapter will introduce you to the concept of virtual machines (VMs) and how they are useful to you as a “practice ground” or sandbox in which to try tools and techniques. We will also show you one way in which you might configure your host system, that is, the physical machine and operating system within which your virtual machines (guests) will run.

There are countless ways in which you might set up a system, and a lot comes down to personal preference. With that in mind, we will provide an overview of setting up a system (something with which you may already be comfortable) before delving into the details of configuring virtual machines for the purpose of hacking. We will go over some hardware considerations, but again there are many options and opinions here.

Something about which you must be aware is your own information security and cyber hygiene. We will therefore provide some pointers on protecting your system from bad actors. This is particularly important if you intend to use such a system for testing your client's network, since your system may contain data belonging to them and potentially detailed information on security flaws! Virtual machines come in handy here too, as they can be used to segregate information from the rest of your system.

We will first discuss hardware, before moving on to installing an operating system. We will then install VirtualBox—a free, open source hypervisor—for creating and managing virtual machines. ...