1. Setting Up the Environment

Setting Up the Environment

We will be using vagrant to standardise the environment so following the lesson plan is easy. The Vagrantfile will provision the appropriate pre-requisites but please go through this document to get an understanding of the steps required to prepare the testing environment.

Mandatory Steps

First, install vagrant and virtualbox. Vagrant can be downloaded from this link. Virtualbox can be downloaded from here.

Next, clone the repository onto your host machine. If you have messed up somewhere along the course and want to revert the state of the repository, just delete the entire directory and perform this step again.

amon@bethany:~$ git clone https://github.com/nnamon/linux-exploitation-course.git
Cloning into 'linux-exploitation-course'...
remote: Counting objects: 19, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Total 19 (delta 2), reused 15 (delta 1), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (19/19), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
amon@bethany:~$

Now, bring the vagrant box up.

amon@bethany:~/sproink/linux-exploitation-course$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Importing base box 'ubuntu/xenial64'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'ubuntu/xenial64' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: linux-exploitation-course_default_1483872823092_95278
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: ubuntu
    default: SSH auth method: password
    default:
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
... snip ...

Once the provisioning finishes, you can ssh into the vagrant box.

The course repository directory you clone previously will be mounted at /vagrant so you can use your preferred text editor.

Now, we need to start the docker containers for the exercises you will be working on. To do this, perform the following steps:

You do not need to rebuild the docker containers after you have built them once but you may need to redeploy the docker containers if you restart the machine.

Windows Users

For Windows users there are two options:

  1. Start a virtual machine containing Ubuntu 16.04 and run the provisioning script found below. Next, manually clone the course repository into the machine. Note that directory locations may be different from the code listings in the course if you go down this route. The choice of virtualisation software you choose is up to you.

  2. Install Vagrant and Virtualbox for Windows. This allows you to follow the instructions above almost identically.

One caveat with Option 2 is that your Windows Installation might not have SSH installed previously. When you invoke vagrant ssh, you might receive a message as follows:

In that case, simply follow the instructions to SSH into the newly provisioned system with an SSH client of your choice such as Putty or SmarTTY.

What Was Installed?

This is the entire provisioning script:

If you used vagrant to bring the machine up, this should have been done for you.

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