RE: Suggested lab materials/systems/setup?

["Billy Dodson" <billy () pmicromart com>]

When you configure vmware to share the same NIC, each guest still gets
its own IP address.  The Host OS will not do any modifying of packets
destined for a guest machine.  You can also assign a physical NIC to
each guest if you had multiple network cards.  But for security testing,
using one NIC will not cause the problems you are questioning.   


Billy Dodson
Network Engineer
PMM
(432) 561-7239
Billy () pmm-i com
www.pmm-i.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Erin Carroll [mailto:amoeba () amoebazone com] 
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 11:01 PM
To: 'Desai, Dipen'; pen-test () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Suggested lab materials/systems/setup?

I'd considered Vmware for just the reasons you (and others) mentioned
but since I have the extra hardware lying about I might as well put it
to use.
One thing that I need to read up on (or get some info from list members)
is how Vmware handles socket connections. A lot of the assessment tools
out there can query raw sockets (either via network or on the host
depending on type of tool). Since Vmware runs the guest OS in a virtual
machine, will the host OS layer skew report results or external data
injection techniques etc?


For instance, let's say Windows 2k3 is susceptible to a new tcp/ip
attack due to the way the 2k3 stack handles things. If I ran a 2k3 guest
virtual OS under a Linux host OS (which does not have vulnerabilities to
the same tcp/ip stack weaknesses) would the host OS interfere when
passing that data to the guest? One hypothetical scenario to help
illustrate what I mean:
attacker/tester sends malformed tcp packets to target "2k3" machine.
Linux host OS (which is not vulnerable) accepts packet, ignoring or
(worse) dropping the malformed payload portion, and passes it on to the
guest virtual 2k3 OS. The attack/test fails but in the real world it
wouldn't.
Oops.

I'm sure there are other considerations I'm overlooking in regards to a
Host OS/Guest Virtual OS implementation but this was one of the first
ones that came to mind.

I'm a big believer in having a lab setup as close to "real life" as
possible. But if Vmware can reduce the equipment investment and does not
have issues such as I describe above that would be excellent. Anyone
have more experience with Vmware that can answer my above questions?

-Erin Carroll


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Desai, Dipen [mailto:ddesai1 () ipolicynetworks com]
> Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 2:08 PM
> To: Erin Carroll; pen-test () securityfocus com
> Subject: RE: Suggested lab materials/systems/setup?
>
> VMWare is the way to go in such testing scenarios. I have it setup 
> with multiple guest Operating Systems. You can have each Virtual 
> machine set up with the configurations you want to and save the image 
> with the required configuration before executing the 
> attacks/exploits/malware against those virtual machines.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Deepen Desai
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erin Carroll [mailto:amoeba () amoebazone com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 3:43 PM
> To: pen-test () securityfocus com
> Subject: Suggested lab materials/systems/setup?
>
> 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"