Installing virtual OSes
We will need one OS to be used as an attack machine and one to be used as a target machine. In practical cases, most of the time, the attack machine is mostly a Linux distribution-based system and the target/victim machine will be a Windows-based system. We will use the term target and victim interchangeably throughout this book.
Attack machine OS
There are a lot of options for a pen testing machine. However, there are a few Linux-based distributions that stand out:
- Kali Linux
- Parrot OS
There are other options as well. However, I recommend using Kali Linux, since it's stable and widely used for pen testing. Kali has a lot of tools preconfigured, which can save a lot of time.
Kali Linux
To download a virtual image for Kali Linux, go to Kali's download page: https://www.kali.org/downloads/.
Let's begin the installation process:
- In the Download section, select Kali Linux 64-bit VirtualBox. This is a complete...