Hands-On Hacking

Getting Started

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Table of Contents
HANDS-ON HACKING ................................................................................................................. 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................... 2
GETTING STARTED ....................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3
Setup Requirements ....................................................................................................................... 3
VirtualBox Host-Only Networking .................................................................................................. 3
LAB Configuration........................................................................................................................... 4
Pen-Test VM Configuration ............................................................................................................ 7
Example Test .................................................................................................................................. 9
Ready ............................................................................................................................................ 10

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Getting Started

Introduction
Welcome to Hacker House Hands-On Hacking course. This course has been developed to
teach ethical hacking in a classroom environment using real-world situations & scenarios. Our
course has been developed from several decades of experience in real-world hacking and
unlike many courses does not teach solely through academic examples. We prefer to simulate
real scenarios and systems as closely as possible to give you a taste of real-world hacking in a
sandbox environment. This document details the necessary student setup configuration that
is required to progress through our hands-on labs. You will need to follow these instructions
to configure your system to meet the course expectations. Follow this guide to setup our
sample lab and begin your ethical hacking adventure with Hacker House as your guide!

Setup Requirements
You will need a computer (laptop) with the following technical specifications to complete our
course. Please note the specifications are a recommended minimum requirement.

2 or more CPU cores (Intel i3 & above recommended)

At least 2-4gb of RAM
Approximately 40-50gb free hard disk space (you may be ok with less)
VirtualBox installed (https://www.VirtualBox.org/)
Hacker House sample LAB module hh-mailserver-v1-i386.hybrid.iso
Pen-testing distro ISO (we recommend Kali-Linux https://www.kali.org/downloads/)

If your computer meets the above specifications and you have all the necessary files, then
you should be able to progress and begin our step-by-step configuration guide below. If your
computer does not meet the minimum requirement, then consider finding another computer
before attempting to take this course.

VirtualBox Host-Only Networking

You need to configure a host-only network in VirtualBox that is not enabled by default. To
enable host-only networking click on the Preferences option under File in VirtualBox
Manager. You should then be able to select Network in the preferences menu dialog. The
image on the next page shows the configuration options in more detail.

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Click the network card with a + icon in the Host-only Networks field to ensure you have
a host-only network configured (highlighted as vboxnet0). You are now ready to begin the
lab configuration.

LAB Configuration
You will need to create a new VirtualBox VM to make use of the provided ISO image. Open
VirtualBox and complete these steps to get the environment running.
1. Open VirtualBox and from the drop-down Machine menu select New
2. Enter HackerHouse mailserver01 in the name field
3. Select Linux from the Type drop down menu
4. Version should be set to Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x (64bit)
5. Minimum memory should be set to at least 1024MB
6. Do not add a virtual hard disk
7. Create Machine

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Right-click on the HackerHouse mailserver01 VM in your VirtualBox management

application and then click settings. You will need to add the hh-mailserver-v1-
i386.hybrid.iso ISO as a LiveCD/DVD. Click the storage icon and then click on the CD next to
the Optical Drive menu. You should then be able to add the ISO from the drop-down menu
provided. Do not click OK, as we still need to configure networking.

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Set Adapter 1 in the Network icon pane to Host-only Adapter, this ensures the VirtualBox
host can only talk to your computer and not the Internet or your local network. Click OK to
save the changes.

WARNING: Hacker House labs are intentionally designed to be insecure and vulnerable to
hacking. It is strongly advised they are never connected to a live network unless you are
completely sure of your actions.

You can now click start and after the machine boots up you will be welcomed with a screen
similar to the following! Make a note of the IP address shown, you will need it later on.

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If you did not see the message above on successful boot, go back and review your
configuration to ensure you have met the minimum requirements and you followed the
instructions correctly. If you do not have an IP address in the console, try pressing return a
couple of times as DHCP can sometimes be delayed. Congratulations if you made it this far,
the lab is ready for use!

Pen-Test VM Configuration
We now need to create a pen-test VM using a downloaded ISO (Kali Linux or equivalent). This
machine will be used to work through the example attacks. There are plenty of guides online
for installing a virtual machine for persistent use and we advise you create such a setup using
as many CPU cores and memory as is possible. Keeping things simple we will detail here only
how to setup a minimal environment for training use using a kali-linux-2016.2-amd64.iso.
Open VirtualBox and complete these steps to get the environment running.
1. Open VirtualBox and from the drop-down Machine menu select New
2. Enter Kali Linux in the name field
3. Select Linux from the Type drop down menu
4. Version should be set to Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x (64bit)
5. Minimum memory should be set to at least 1024MB, the more the better.
6. Do not add a virtual hard disk
7. Create Machine

Right-click on the Kali Linux VM in your VirtualBox management application and then click
settings. You will need to add the kali-linux-2016.2-amd64.iso ISO as a LiveCD/DVD. Click
the storage icon and then click on the CD next to the Optical Drive menu. You should then be

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able to add the ISO from the drop-down menu provided. Do not click OK, as we still need to
configure networking.

Set Adapter 1 in the Network icon pane to Bridged Adapter and set it to your network
adapter for general networking. Set Adapter 2 to be enabled and set Host-Only Adapter.
This allows your pen test VM to be dual-homed, giving it Internet access if required and also
connects a private network on your host for test purposes. Click OK to save the changes.

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You can now click start and after the machine boots up you should be presented with the Kali
Linux default desktop.

Example Test
Providing you configured both VirtualBox instances correctly, you should now have a
simulated server running with a network connection to your penetration testing platform.
You can now perform a simple test to ensure that both hosts can communicate with each
other correctly! From your penetration testing VM open a terminal and perform the following
steps.
1. Open up a terminal
2. Type the ping command and the IP address of your HackerHouse VM.
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3. Using the example IP from earlier ping 192.168.56.103
4. You should see ICMP ECHO REPLY packets.

If you didnt see ICMP ECHO replies, go back and validate that both VM network settings are
correctly configured. If you did see ICMP ECHO replies then you are ready to begin. Now try
running nmap with the IP and validate you see open ports similar to the listing below.

If you do not see port scan output or are experiencing difficulties, ensure you do not have any
security software such as a firewall or anti-virus product that maybe interfering with your
connection settings.

Ready
If you followed all the above steps correctly and successfully completed the testing section,
you are ready to begin! Watch and work through the sample video on the Hacker House
website (https://www.myhackerhouse.com/training) to get an idea of some of activities you
will be learning on this course. Several of our labs will be made available in this format so
ensure you can complete this process and that your computer is capable of everything in this
document before attending the training. Thank you for expressing an interest in the Hacker
House training and we hope to see you in one of our classes soon! Hack the planet!
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