The Ultimate PenTesting System

If you are like me you just love to make things do what they are not supposed to, and go places where you just shouldn't be. This is one of the reasons why I made it my mission over the past two weeks to create the ultimate PenTesting System. So here is what it is and how to do it your self.

Hardware - I went down to the basement and found the newest laptop that was just sitting around collecting dust. In my case it is a Dell Latitude D830. This was my last laptop before it was replaced with my MacBook Pro. This sweet little thing has got 4GB of RAM, and Intel Wireless 3945, a lacking 80GB HDD, and some Centrino processor. Good enough to run Backtrack 4, Windows XP, Fedora 13 (security spin), Windows XP (again - you will see why later).

The Process ... with all my mistakes removed - just log in as root

1. Start with building a fresh system using the entire disk. My preference here was to load BackTrack 4 ( http://www.backtrack-linux.org/ ) because you will want very precise control over your Wireless and Wired ports for sniffing, flooding, and well you know all the other great stuff that BT4 does.

2. Now that you have BT4 loaded on your system create a user

useradd -d /home/VMAdmin vmadmin

passwd vmadmin

enter the new password for this user

3. OK so now you have a BT4 system with 2 users ... whoopee right? Here is where it gets fun. Go out and download VMWare Server 2.0.2 from http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ and make sure you download the TAR not the RPM! You will have to register with VMWare to get the download but the rest is free.

4. Follow the steps HERE! There are so many bad tutorials out there but this one actually works. I could just copy his/her work but I like to give credit where it is deserved, it is just a little incomplete for my needs.

4.a. While you are installing VMWare Server pay attention to the questions the installer askes. When it asks you for a user give the username vmadmin. This is why we created the user. I don't really think that it is a great idea to run VMWare as root, now do you?

4.b. Also when you are answering questions move the VMWare server directory to /home/vmadmin this is just so that you can keep everything nicely organized.

5. Now you have VMWare installed and running! Yeah but I had problems still at this point. If you are on a laptop the keyboard is not mapped correctly!!! Freakn' sucks real hard too. So open up /etc/vmware/config by entering

vi /etc/vmware/config

Copy all of the information indented below to the end of the file and then use :wq to write and quite vi.

xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End

6. Enter a shell and enter

service vmware restart

7. Open Firefox and go to http://localhost:8222

8. What's this? It's BROKEN! No you just have to tell "no script" to back off. Down at the bottom right hand corner of Firefox click on Options and select Options again. Another window opens. Add localhost to the Whitelist and click OK.

9. Now log in to VMWare using your vmadmin account. Away you go!

10. Just a tip. Create a Folder under /home/vmadmin/virtual\ machines\ called ISO and copy all the ISOs you want to boot off of there.

GO CRAZY, and don't get caught doing anything bad now.