Penetration Testing: Re: Suggested lab materials/systems/setup?

[John Kinsella <jlk () thrashyour com>]

Anybody out there got their lab working with Partimage or (just found)
Clonezilla/DRBL?  It's on my list to do this week, so I'll report back if I'm
the guinea pig, just curious if anybody has experiences...

http://www.partimage.org (site's down right now :| but the sf page is up
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/partimage/ )
http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net

John

On Sun, Jul 10, 2005 at 04:45:29PM -0700, Mike Sweeney wrote:
> VMware is king in my lab. I use a P4 3Ghz with 2 gig of RAM and it  
> just works well. The newest 5.0 workstation is very stable. I used  
> version 4.x in my book and I had SuSE, Redhat, Fedora C1 and C2,  
> Slackware and FreeBSD all running on VMware, sometimes multiple  
> images running concurrently.  On the Windows side, I have an image of  
> Windows 2003 running the Cisco 3.x Secure Server for RADIUS/TACACS+  
> work.
>
> I also recycled an old Cisco 4230 IDS unit into a test box. It's a  
> dual P3 500 and works pretty well aside from it weighs a ton to move  
> around being a 4U rack mount box.
>
> For firewalls, I have different IP table scripts to load, a PIX501  
> and a m0n0wall router on a WISP card(kicks ass). I have two access  
> points, Cisco 340 and a hacked Linksys. Various switches and hubs  
> laying around.
>
> Workstations are a few different intel laptops, my compaq 700M is a  
> fav even though it's only a PIII/800 but it has swappable drives. I  
> have several drives preloaded with different OSs. in a lab, that is  
> very handy and it's handy onsite. I just recently picked up a iMacG5  
> which I love and I've been using for my daily stuff. Pretty front end  
> and BSD based backend.. you gotta love it.
>
> Imaging server?  no way dude ;)  A firewire/USB2 external drive with  
> Acronis TrueImage works fine and is ALOT cheaper :) I use it on both  
> Wintel and the Linux boxen. I have not tried it on the Mac but then  
> Carbon Copy Cloner works fine for Tiger when run from a command line.
>
> I should mention that a switch that supports real VLANs is very handy  
> to mock up a network of different subnets etc. I say real VLANs only  
> because some switches claim they do VLANs but cheeseout on the   
> details. A brand "D" switch does vlans but you can not mirror the  
> VLAN, only a port in the VLAN which kind of sucks at times. Maybe the  
> newer ones are better but I just bought a used Cisco 2900 series and  
> called it done.
>
> Mike Sweeney
> ____________________________________
>
> mikesweeney () packetattack com
> www.packetattack.com
> Home of "Network Security using Linux"
>
> Office 714.637.4235
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>
>
> On Jul 10, 2005, at 3:42 PM, Erin Carroll wrote:
>
> > All,
> >
> > I'm in the process of setting up a pen-test lab environment of several
> > servers running various OS flavors (both Windows & BSD/*nix) along  
> > with a
> > netscreen-10 firewall and cisco 3825 to use as the lab router. What  
> > do other
> > list members use for their lab environments and what suggestions/ 
> > issues have
> > you encountered? I'm just using equipment I have laying around but  
> > would be
> > interested in hearing about other lab setups to get some ideas (or  
> > excuses
> > to go shopping) on what else I can utilize for pen-testing practice.
> >
> > I'm definitely going to set up an imaging server (jumpstart &  
> > Altiris) to
> > make changing things around less painful but I've also considered  
> > Vmware on
> > the hosts. Basically I'm curious as to what you all use to practice
> > pen-testing to keep the skills sharp when not "on the job".
> >
> > Thanks!
> > --
> > Erin Carroll
> > "Do Not Taunt Happy-Fun Ball"