Hacking Lab Environment

[chad.weber]

I'm currently working on setting up a hacking lab environment on my desktop in VMWare Workstation, with Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise, a Windows XP Professional SP2 client, a BackTrack 4 Pre-Final machine as the attacker, and I plan on adding other machines as well, such as a web server.

If anyone is experimenting with a similar setup, let me know, and we'll bounce some ideas back and forth.

[ben.actis]

Chad I frequently use VMware for playing around pen testing and security tools. If anyone has any specific questions or great methods of starting I'd be willing to share info.

[justin.bennett]

I will be doing a similar setup most likely, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista Business, and Windows XP SP3 RC2, along with Ubuntu and Backtrack. Don't know if I'll run them all at the same time, but at least one of the servers and Vista along with XP, and I also have Windows 7 to play with too. Not sure what I should test first though, probably gonna start off with Windows 2003 penetration tests.

[ben.actis]

The nice thing about vista and windows 7 there are command prompt commands you can put in that extend the trial cycle. You can make a VMware snapshot right after you install. This way you can keep reverting your VMs back over and over without having to input a valid serial. A perpetual trial period.

[justin.bennett]

I have a legitimate copy of each, might have two licenses of 2008 even. But ya, I gatta make sure to make snapshots of the machines before I start hacking away at them.