Setup Penetration Testing Lab to Learn Hacking at Home
For IT lovers and Tech geeks, It’s time to Setup a Penetration Testing Lab to learn Information Security and testing some hacking tips for protecting our network or home computers from being hacked. This Lab we are going to create is not only for Hacking and Penetration Testing. It’s the lab which is necessary for all computer science students and technology geeks.
A Lab within a computer reduce electricity usage and has many more benefits. Even you can create it within your personal Laptop. If it would be on a laptop, it is portable and you can carry everywhere with yourself. The time is gone when the hardware of a computer was weak and just could run an operating system with a few software. But nowadays each computer at least has a CPU i3 or higher with 4 GB RAM or higher. So you can run multiple virtual operating systems (OS) separately at the same time.
Virtualization Tools To Set Up A Penetration Testing Lab
There are many Virtualization software for this purpose and all of them are easy to install and using a virtualization environment. Hyper-v, a free and built-in hypervisor software on Windows 8 higher. It’s the best and I like it too much, but for enterprise network and working with Microsoft software products. Like SQL Server, Windows Server, System Center, and others.
When we are using for multi-vendor products, Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS, Router IOS, and Web Server and web Apps, we must install and test them on Lab that can support all of them. So from basic hacking a standalone PC to Wireless hacking and even web app penetration testing to enterprise network penetration testing I suggest to create your lab with VMWare.
VMWare workstation is the appropriate tool for setting up your penetration testing lab and networking training lab. Unfortunately, it is not free like Hyper-V. But you can use VMWare player for free which is not more flexible and doesn’t have the same functions as a workstation.
So good, you completely understand which Virtualization software is preferable and flexible for Learning Penetration Testing and Hacking. Now try to create your lab. First of all download all software you need for testing. Windows Server, Windows Client, Linux Operating system, and Web Application penetrating testing.
Install VMware as Virtual Host Server
Now go to VMware website and download the VMware workstation. Download the Windows edition if you are using Windows. It has for Linux and Mac OS also. When the download complete successfully, simply install it like simple software installation and create a new virtual machine according to this step by step article ” How to Create A Virtual Machine in VMWare?“.
Note: Your system must meet the virtualization requirement. It must support virtualization technology (VT) and enabled before installing any virtualization software. You can enable it through your system BIOS where you can find other settings also.
To install Kali Linux on VMWare read the article “How to Install Dual Boot Windows and Kali Linux?“. In the next step, I will show you How to configure VMWare for Penetration Testing Lab.
