Before we begin building attack labs and learning offensive security, we need a safe environment to work in. In the next modules we are going to take the first steps towards setting up our personal lab. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Kali
- Ubuntu
- Win10
- Server2022
Over the next chapter "Networking" we will learn more about networking and it will conclude with us creating our own isolated network in which these machines will live.
Students are free to use any platform they like. The course uses VMware Workstation 25H2 for demonstrations because it provides consistent VM and network control. Another good alternative, especially for beginners, is Oracle VirtualBox. It will work perfectly well for the scope of the course.
Hyper-V is not used in this course so the lab steps remain consistent.
We are going to be deploying offensive tooling, simulating threats, reverse engineering malware and perform other potentially messy operations, which will contaminate the environment.
Rearming Windows
If at any point your evaluation expires and you get the Windows watermark, you can rearm your copy:
slmgr /rearm
Then reboot:
shutdown /r /t 0