Technical considerations for setting up virtual lab - CEH studies

johnnycrypto

I've decided to forge ahead with the CEH. So I've heard and read that virtualbox is a good way to go when setting up a home lab to study for the CEH.

I noticed there is a virtualbox.org web site even though this is supposedly an Oracle enterprise product?

I basically am concerned about which is real and where to get the real one.

Second, wonder if you think 12GB ram will be sufficient just to get started or am I going to max out fast. I can't do any of this on work computers and unfortunately all my experience in this realm is big data/lots o' memory.

Third - Has anyone done the virtualized practice environment offered by EC-council? If so, was it worthwhile?

many thanks.

cyberguypr

In security, you always need to pay attention to the small details. If you go through Oracle.com and look up VirtualBox you will notice that all documentation and download links point to virtualbox.org.

TheFORCE

https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=Virtualbox.org

Did you look to find to whom the site is registered?
Simple stuff when studying to be a hacor.

Shane2

That website should be good to go.

I used VM workstation, I ran my lab on a laptop with 16 gigs of ram, but I would have been fine with 12.

johnnycrypto

Sweet thanks a mill Shane. Good points on the icann lookup. Up too late researching stuff. Appreciate you schooling me.

BuzzSaw

Virtualization for labs is a great way to go. I ran VMware Fusion on my Mac. With 16GB of memory, I was running (at one point) 7 VM's at once. Attacker, Domain controller, and a slew of "victim" boxes. One slight heads up on Virtual Box. Generally speaking, the network stack within VB tends be a bit more flaky than, say, VMware workstation or fusion. Nothing you cant work around, nor is it bad, it's just something to keep an eye on. Nothing worse than pounding your head into the wall only to find out, your traffic isn't actually doing what you thought it was doing. If you have the money, personally I'd recommend VMware, but that's just me and my two cents.

PC509

Also, in my experience, those "victim" boxes don't typically require much RAM. They don't do much of anything but just sit there. I had a couple Lenovo desktops that I used. Each had 8GB RAM and ran the host OS (Windows 7 & Server 2012) and 4 VM's each (XP, 7, a couple Vulnhub boxes). i5's, and older ones at that.

I seriously doubt those machines would be fast enough for any real work, but it was more than enough to use as victims. So, I'm sure you can run a couple VM's as victim machines and your host OS still running fine. Might slow down at times, but it's doable.

VirtualBox worked fine for me. It wasn't a long term thing, only a study lab that I created, played with, and tore down before the 120 day trial license ran out on Server 2012. I am going to find a decent used rack mount server with multiple processors and a lot more RAM to create a more 'permanent' testing lab. Be able to create/tear down VM's when I need them, clone them, etc. so I can test and play a lot more. Really learn how this stuff works without using pre-made tools.

johnnycrypto

Thanks BuzzSaw (by the way, have taken your advice many times in my lurking the boards).

You read my mind - My question is kind of coming from the vantage point of debating Fusion vs Virtualbox. Thanks for the heads up on the net stack potential issues. Seems to me Fusion is quite a reasonable price all in all. I will think it over. I am doing this cert to really get more hands on and to be able to move on to OSCP and communicate better with my technical team mates, so it would be nice to have the most stable environment to learn in.

scenicroute

I use VMWare Workstation. I'd definitely get Fusion if I were you. I'm envious of how cheap Fusion is compared to Workstation. VMWare is just a lot easier to use than Virtualbox IMHO, and I used Virtualbox for several years before switching.

johnnycrypto

Hmm I somehow mixed up Fusion with vsphere - I don't have a mac so I guess fusion is out. So will look into Workstation. Yow - you're right about the price!

nebula105

if you're looking for free options:
1) VMWare Workstation
2) Hyper-V (there's Kali on a VHD if you have Win10 Pro, or Server 2012)
3) VirtualBox

Mike7

johnnycrypto wrote: »

I've decided to forge ahead with the CEH. So I've heard and read that virtualbox is a good way to go when setting up a home lab to study for the CEH.

Second, wonder if you think 12GB ram will be sufficient just to get started or am I going to max out fast. I can't do any of this on work computers and unfortunately all my experience in this realm is big data/lots o' memory.

Third - Has anyone done the virtualized practice environment offered by EC-council? If so, was it worthwhile?

VMware Player is free for non-commerical, personal and home use.

If you are on HDD, run your VMs on SSD for improved performance.

I use their Labs for my ECSA. Seems that both ISACA and EC-C uses LabsOnDemand, and you can try labs demo at https://cybersecurity.isaca.org/csx-certifications/csx-practitioner-certification#5-labs

yoba222

Don't forget Linux KVM and its gui frontend: Virtual Machine Manager
https://virt-manager.org/

BuzzSaw

johnnycrypto wrote: »

Thanks BuzzSaw (by the way, have taken your advice many times in my lurking the boards).

You read my mind - My question is kind of coming from the vantage point of debating Fusion vs Virtualbox. Thanks for the heads up on the net stack potential issues. Seems to me Fusion is quite a reasonable price all in all. I will think it over. I am doing this cert to really get more hands on and to be able to move on to OSCP and communicate better with my technical team mates, so it would be nice to have the most stable environment to learn in.

Thanks for the compliment man.

Unfortunately VMware is expensive. It's odd how much cheaper Fusion is vs Workstation. I think mostly its because the competition in the macOS space is a a little stiffer than in the windows space. They have to stray price competitive. Anyways, if you just want to start messing around, VirtualBox isn't a terrible way to go. But, if you think you will be doing VM stuff long term, then really the VMware investment will pay for itself.

There is sometime to be said about making free software work. Sometimes you will learn alot.

Calibra

I got a DELL T110ii loaded with VMware ESXi 6.
It worked a treat