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This page is part of a larger series on building a cybersecurity lab using VirtualBox. Click here to be taken back to the project home page.
Download pfSense
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pfSense is acting as the NAT router and firewall for the lab environment. Therefore, pfSense will need to be the first VM to boot when running your lab. After pfSense boots, you can start your other VMs.
Whenever you are building a lab – whether in the cloud or on premise – you should always plan your network first. You should factor in future growth as well. It's much more difficult to change network design later than planning for it now.
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As of recently, Netgate is requiring users to create an account and provide personal information in order to download the pfSense CE ISO images, which I am not thrilled to see.
I understand that this is a mitigation strategy to combat piracy of their pfSense Plus software by third-party firewall appliance vendors (among other reasons). That said, I will show you a way to download the file whilst protecting your privacy.
I understand that this is a mitigation strategy to combat piracy of their pfSense Plus software by third-party firewall appliance vendors (among other reasons). That said, I will show you a way to download the file whilst protecting your privacy.
Download pfSense Community Edition
pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more
AMD64 ISO and click ADD TO CART
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Extracting the ISO Image
7-Zip
Download an archive file handler such as 7-Zip or simialr
.iso file will be stored in this folderCreate the VM
Click the New button
The Name and Machine Folder are specific to your computer. Ensure you choose the correct Type and Version as shown here.
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Do not start the VM yet!
Customize the VM
Right-click the VM and choose Settings
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Move Hard Disk above Optical and disable Floppy
Configure the Network Interfaces
Adapter 1: WAN
Adapter 2: LAN
Adapter 3: ISOLATED
Adapter 4: AD_LAB
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All done. Click OK.
Installing pfSense
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If it asks for the startup disk, just choose the
.iso disk we downloaded earlier. Press Enter.
Configuring pfSense
Wait for the VM to finish booting. When asked Should VLANs be set up now [y|n]?, choose n.
Configuring the Interfaces
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You should see something like this
- The WAN interface pulled an IP address from my home network.
- The Default LAN IP address space is 192.168.1.1/24
- OPT1 (optional interface 1) – Isolated – is not yet configured.
- OPT2 (optional interface 2) – AD_LAB – is not yet configured.
Configure the LAN
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The LAN interface is going to serve DHCP clients, and does not get its IP address from a DHCP server elsewhere. Thus, we configure it statically.
y to enable the DHCP server
n, we want to keep using TLS on the web portal.
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All finished with the LAN configuration.
Configure the Isolated LAN
y to enable the DHCP server
n, we want to keep using TLS on the web portal.✅
All finished with the ISOLATED LAN configuration.
Configure the AD Lab LAN
n to disable the DHCP server, as the domain controller will be acting as the DHCP server
n, we want to keep using TLS on the web portal.✅
All finished with the AD_LAB LAN configuration.
Final Check
You should now see something like this
A Note on Configuring the Firewall
In this guide, we will not be making the pfSense web console available from the WAN.
This is because you may be using a laptop and if you connect to public wireless, then your pfSense web console would be open to the others on that network.
We will be using our Kali VM to configure the pfSense firewall rules in a bit.
Next Step
Importing Kali Using the Official VirtualBox Image
In this module, we will look at the process of importing the pre-packaged Kali VM for VirtualBox directly from the official source.
0xBEN
