This blog is going to be highly practical. Therefore, you will need a lab, a place where you can practice and experiment with the things that you’re going to learn in this blog series. Not only that, but having a lab is essential for hackers or pen testers because, let’s say, you discovered a new attack or you want to experiment with a new attack, or you learn something new online and want to test it. Then the perfect place for you to test this and practice hacking is a hacking or a testing lab.
Creating Your Lab
Now, to create a lab, you just need a number of computers with different operating systems, and you will need a number of networks if you’re testing network attacks. And if you’re testing website attacks, then you will need to install websites on these computers. Or you can do all of this inside your computer, inside one machine, and install everything else as virtual machines. And this is what we’re going to do.
Setting Up Virtualization
So, let’s say you have your computer right here. This is your main computer that you use every day to check your emails or even to watch this blog. This computer might be running Windows, OS X, or Linux; it doesn’t really matter, it can run any operating system. You can keep all the programs that you love and like, and install virtualization software such as VirtualBox or VMware. Virtualization software allows us to create a number of virtual computers inside your main computer. So, we can have three, four, five, or ten computers all installed inside your main operating system, inside your main computer.
Benefits of Using Virtual Machines
The really cool thing about this is you will not need a number of computers. You can do everything inside a single computer. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to have a hacking machine. This is going to be the machine that we will use in order to hack into other machines. We’re going to install Kali Linux on it.ย
And we’re going to have two target machines; these are machines that we’re going to try to hack into and practice hacking. One of them is going to be running Windows, and the other one is going to be running an operating system called Metasploitable, and we will talk about that once we get to it.
Functionality and Isolation
Now, it is very important to understand that you will not lose any functionality when you install an operating system as a virtual machine. You can use that machine exactly as if it’s a real physical machine. So, the really cool thing about using virtual machines is that, first of all, you’re not going to lose any functionality.ย
Second, all the machines are going to be isolated. So, as we go through the blog series, we’re going to be trying to hack into these machines, and we might actually break one of them, but that’s fine. It will not affect your host machine. You will be able to easily fix this and go back to a snapshot of when the machine was working without affecting your main computer.
Advantages of Virtualization
The other cool thing is that you’ll be able to have a number of different versions of each of these machines, and you’ll be able to change the configuration easily, change the network settings, switch between different states of these machines, and so on. So, by using virtualization, you will not lose any functionality, but you will gain many cool features. And the main thing to keep in mind is your host machine, your main computer, will never be affected. It’s completely isolated. And if we break any of these machines, nothing will happen to your precious computer that you use every day.
Practical Application
In this way, you can always use your host machine for daily use, for checking emails, watching videos, doing whatever you do normally, and then use your virtual machines for hacking and practicing the attacks. And this is what we’re going to be doing in this blog series. So, suppose, I have a Windows computer that does not contain any hacking tools, so I can’t really use it for hacking, but I have a virtualization software called VMware installed on it. This software allows me to run multiple operating systems as virtual machines within this host computer. So, I can use the host computer for my daily use and then use the virtual machines for whatever use I want for testing or for hacking.
Lab Details
So, if I see here, you can see that I have Kali Linux in the HOST MACHINE. This is an operating system that we will use for hacking. You can see I have another Windows computer. You can see that I have Linux. All of it will be installed as virtual machines, and we’re going to be using these as we go through the blog series for hacking or for testing without affecting our main host operating system.
Now, don’t worry about any of this. In the next blog, I will show you in detail how to install this virtualization software, VMware, on all of the major operating systems: Windows, Linux, or Apple macOS. As we go through the blog series, I will also show you in detail how to install these operating systems as virtual machines within VMware.
Next Blog: Initial Preparation: For Setting Up the Hacking LAB