Installing Kali Linux in a VirtualBox Virtual Machine

Introduction

For years, Backtrack Linux, a penetration testing suite from Offensive Security has been the standard operating system for security testing professionals. However, Offensive Security has just released a new distribution based on Backtrack called Kali Linux which seems to offer quite a few improvements. In a previous post, I showed how to create a Backtrack virtual machine using the open-source virtualization software VirtualBox. I felt it would be helpful to create a similar post showing how to create a Kali Linux virtual machine. The process will be nearly identical, but hopefully will still serve as a useful reference to some. With that being said, let's get started.

Automated Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Using APIs

Introduction

The first step to performing any successful security engagement is reconnaissance. How much information one is able to enumerate about given personnel (for social engineering engagements) or systems can often impact the effectiveness of the engagement. In this post, we will discuss what Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is and why it takes so much time, as well as ways we can use various application programming interfaces (APIs) to automate much of this process for us. Hopefully this post will help shed light on the importance of proper privacy settings, and the threat of automated information gathering due to APIs.

How to setup and configure snort for a Linux (Ubuntu spec.) System

Introduction

Note: This guide is not very stable, use at your own risk, do not go into this without some understanding of *nix, and the ability to solve problems and google and stuff. Also snort was not designed for wireless, this configuration will not work with wireless at all. There are hacky patches you could maybe apply to get snort to work with kismet or something (I didn't look too far into it) but honestly at that point it would much easier to choose a more light weight IDS

This is a post Jordan and myself had been talking about writing since the last meeting. Snort is a wonderful open source Intrusion Detection System (IDS) which is very effective as a first response system when your machine is being attacked, or as a line of defense in computer security related games like Capture the Flag (CTF)

I decided to set it up on my local machine for fun (since it's not very necessary on a machine not running services, but fun to have) as well as give me the ability to step through the process. I'm setting up the Snort IDS utilizing the postgres SQL database (because I already have it setup for metasploit interaction).