[Proxmox] How to make a Virtual lab

Malware
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Hi everyone ! Hope you’re all doing well.

So today I will show you how you can build your own virtual lab ( For malware analysis or pentest lab ), in this Tutorial I will use proxmox who is an Open Source Server solution.

Table of content

Why Proxmox

Proxmox is Open Source and easy to understand and if you have an old laptop you can use it to build you virtual lab.

With your Virtual lab you’ll be able to

e.g :
- Create an Enterprise network and try to get Admin privilege and learn How to fix the security breach
- Create an isolated Network for Malware analysis
- Creating a webserver and try to “Hack it”
- Setting up NAT, IDS, Firewall, ect

Now Let’s begin !

Downloading Proxmox

The first thing you need to do is download the iso here

Here the screenshot of the website where you can download proxmox

Installation process

Now that you have proxmox you can burn in on a CD or USB Drive.

( I will use virtualbox to show you the process of installation through screenshot )

1 - Select Install Proxmox VE

2 - Agree the General Public Licence

3 - Select the drive where you want to install proxmox and click next

Warning : The content of the disk will me overwritten so be careful if you want to make a dual boot.

You can click on Option to choose the filesystem of the disk, by default it will be ext4

4 - Type the country and select the keyboard layout

5 - Now set a password and use a valid email ( The email is used for password recovery )

6 - Here come the Networking

Choose the name of your hostname e.g : pentest.local

Fill all the input according to your Networking

*Set a static Ip ( Go in you router option ) *
If you have your own dns you can use it.

Congratulation ! You have installed proxmox

How to connect to the Virtual Lab

Now that you have finally installed Proxmox, use the static ip you’ve set to log in

https://yourip:8006/

Use the user and password that you set up

How to create a Virtual Machine

Now to create a Virtual machine select the Create a VM

Choose a name for your machine

Select the Operating systeme you’ll use

Then you need to select the iso you upload

Choose the size of the disk here :

Next is about the CPU

And the last thing is the memory and the networking configuration

Memory

Networking

Upload the iso

If you want to use a debian, Arch Linux or something else you will need to upload the iso to your proxmox server

In the Left panel select Local ( thenameofyourserver )

Select the content tab and you’re ready to upload your iso !

P.S : If you need more information and something is not clear I will update this tutorial

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Great article, proxmox is one of my favourite VM manager. Good job :wink:

Best,
Nitrax

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Wow. I’d heard of proxmox, but I never knew it was this effective.

I’m going to have to do this. Better than messing around with VirtualBox and old switches and such.

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Maybe I will do another tutorial about :

  • How to make a Malware Lab Machine under proxmox
  • How to create an Enterprise network

This can be helpful :slight_smile:

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Awesome share, bookmarked until I get more ram for my lab system!

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The enterprise network will be interesting, perhaps we can try out pass the hash? It seems that method has died lately? Or at least. I haven’t heard much about it.

Does it still work?

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This is what I want to test ! Mimikatz is still effective to dump password from lsass but I don’t know if pass the hash still work

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Some nooby things that occured to me , while installing proxmox. Perhaps it can be time saving and of help to some people who aren’t network wizzards and don’t have much experience with VM’s etc.

  • installation on a usb: in linux using dd, don’t install to /dev/sdb1 , but to /dev/sdb as it won’t be bootable else.
  • proxmox did overwrite my windows partition. Not the partition i had kali installed on. Kali doesnt appear in the proxmox bootmanager anymore. Might need to fix that later on, or just install it in proxmox.
  • I installed proxmox with belgian/french (azerty) keyboard layout. It worked fine in the installer, tho when in proxmox command line on the proxmox machine, it’s back to qwerty. (doesnt matter of course when connecting trough ip:8006)
  • to be able to log in, i had to connect the proxmox machine on an ethernet cable with the router first.
  • login with your username: Uhm username ? i didn’t pick a username, it only asked for a password during installation ?! Lets try root… yay.
  • win7 iso downloading wont work if its a product key of a pre installed windows. changing target to win10…
    • try harder: i found a way to get win7 iso on this site. (allowed to share ?)
  • When trying to run the installed iso, i got an error “Error! No accelerator found !”. Can be solved by turning off "KVM Hardware Virtualization " in the options tab.
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You dd to the raw device /dev/sda instead of the partition /dev/sda1 because the code to load the bootloader needs to be in the MBR which resides in the first sector. The partitions come later. MBR is read before anything else.

More here (see the 2nd Paragraph): https://linuxjourney.com/lesson/boot-process-bios

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Great article, I’m very interested in the setup up for malware analysis with isolated networks . Can you please help

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Check this
kudos to da_667

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@L3akM3-0day what advantages does proxmox offer over oVirt?

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This is brilliant, didn’t even know this existed. So much better, or more recommended, than using the traditional VirtualBox or VMWare?

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