The Semi Comprehensive Guide To Building a Home Lab

Editor's Notes

• #3: I have evolved a home lab over many years, starting with some Server 2003 machines about 13 years ago.
• #4: This is the talk I would want if I were starting over today. Hopefully help you avoid some mistakes I’ve made.
• #5: You can build skills that are directly transferable to your resume and applicable for potential employers.. Knowing how this is put together is important knowledge on the path to infosec pro. Everyone has a test environment. Some people also have a separate production environment. Exposure to tech that might otherwise be expensive. Test ideas before bringing them to your organization. You can roll back mistakes on VMs. It’s also fun. Everyone has a test environment. Some people also have a separate proc
• #6: It’s may seem counter intuitive, but a good notebook or desktop is all you need to get started. Mac, Windows, or Linux, doesn’t matter. But a mac can also run Mac VMs. Bonus you’ve got a good general purpose machine when not vm
• #7: RasPis are also a good place to start. Prices for these start around 35 dollars. Can run Linux or BSD. Have used this to run DNS, although I should have gotten a newer model to improve performance. But you can learn real Linux skills with one of these for cheap, and learn about real infosec skills and concepts as well.
• #8: To make virtualization work, what you need is a hypervisor. There are two types but for the beginner just getting started you want a type 2 hypervisor VMware is gold standard, all the features, lots of premade virtual appliances $80 Fusion $250 Workstation VMware player - free no snapshots Virtual Box - free, cross platform, good feature set, lacks some polish, get what you pay for Parallels -Another choice on the Mac
• #9: Hyper-V is built into win10 pro, ent, and education. Makes some things harder than vmware (networking, mounting drives, sharing files) but it can be done
• #10: You can use refurbished servers from places like tiger direct but they sound like this…
• #11: and use so much power…
• #12: this guy’s happy, not to mention the cooling issues
• #13: I’ve used them to run server OSs and hypervisors. I’ve even run Server 2008 on a notebook before.
• #14: But these are the way to go. Small and quiet. And you can still use the notebook as part of your lab
• #15: At this point you need a type 1 hypervisor, one that runs directly on the hardware without a host OS. 2 choices VMware ESXi -gold standard, but they charge for the cool features like migration, where I started, which is useful to this day Citrix Xenserver - #2 so they try harder, migration is free, easier to update, most easily managed from Windows
• #16: Regardless of the type of hypervisor you have, you are going to want software for the VMs. Kali is an obvious choice especially on a notebook- 1st thing I set up Ubuntu or Debian - 1 of the two main branches of Linux in my mind CentOS - The other main branch and essentially Redhat Enterprise Don’t forget BSD’s - gets you a true UNIX - often poses attackers more of a challenge if not experienced
• #17: XP is sadly still in use (and still supported in POSs and ATMs) Win10 and Server 2016 are the other obvious choices Dreamspark/Microsoft Imagine Microsoft Evaluations IE Developer trials (XP, 7, 8, 10) Newegg - Win10 under $200
• #18: Now you may want to make your windows targets more realistic that’s where Ninite comes in - lets you download and install a lot of popular software easily As well as old versions.com lets you install old versions of windows apps with known vulnerabilities Metasploitable and Damn Vulnerable Linux are some great downloadable linux target vas Vulnhub also has some target vas Metasploitable baseline builder automate the generation of 23 different windows targets - new this week
• #19: Something else you can do, even with a type 2 hypervisor on a notebook, is get experience running Virtualiztion software setup clusters inside a vm I’ve done this on a MBP VMISS has a great blog post on how to do this.
• #20: Nas is a great add on for a home lab Gain experience with iSCSI, RAID, and file sharing protocols - raid experience alone has been helpful in my work life free version of an enterprise grade product Enable VM migration Just need a lot of drives and a 8GB flashI RAID Levels
• #21: Gain experience with a enterprise grade Firewall/UTM Isolate your home lab network VPN Firewall experience directly translates to managing firewall in the enterprise (tivo story) Old pc with intel nice or linked box or run it in a vm
• #22: I used a tp-link, but the key here is to get a smart switch gives you features above and beyond a cheap switch VLANS, Span Port, LAG
• #23: What are some other things you can do? Run security Onion Learn to manage systems at scale with puppet/ansible/or chef GRR -Enterprise grade incident response memory analysis - pause vm Malware analysis- Coleman Kane SOS Sysmon
• #24: Or you have all you need to work through Georgia Weidman’s book on pen testing or get started with Nessus Home