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Setting Up a Lab
In the previous chapter, we learned the concept of hacking. In this chapter, we are going to learn how to set up a virtual environment, so that we can later perform penetration tests on it. In this chapter, we will cover the concept of virtual machines, and will also perform its installation steps. Later in the chapter, we will learn how to install Kali Linux, and the two victim machines on VirtualBox: Windows and the Metasploitable machine. We will also discuss what each of these machines does, and why we are going to use them. Toward the end of the chapter, we will see the concept of snapshots, and how to implement them.
The following topics will be covered in this chapter:
- Lab overview
- Installing Kali Linux
- Installing Metasploitable
- Installing Windows
- Creating snapshots and using snapshots
Lab overview
Since this book is highly practical, we will need a lab, a place where we can learn and perform attacks. To create this, we're going to use a program called VirtualBox.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox is a program that will allow us to install machines, just like normal computers, inside our own machine. We will have one computer, and we will install other computers inside it, acting as virtual machines. These are very important in terms of penetration testing; we're going to be using them a lot in order to set up a lab. It's very important to note that a virtual machine is just like a completely separate, working machine; there is nothing we will lose by installing an operating system as a virtual machine...
