7MS #502: Building a Pentest Lab in Azure

7MS #502: Building a Pentest Lab in Azure

Happy new year friends! Today I share the good, bad, ugly, and BROKEN things I've come across while migrating our Light Pentest LITE training lab from on-prem VMware ESXi to Azure. It has been a fun and frustrating process, but my hope is that some of the tips in today's episode will save you some time/headaches/money should you setup a pentesting training camp in the cloud.

Things I like

  • No longer relying on a single point of failure (Intel NUC, switch, ISP, etc.)

  • You can schedule VMs to auto-shutdown at a certain time each day, and even have Azure send you a notification before the shutdown so you can delay - or suspend altogether - the operation

Things I don't like

  • VMs are by default (I believe) joined to Azure AD, which I don't want. Here's how I got machines unjoined from Azure AD and then joined to my pwn.town domain:
dsregcmd /leave Add-Computer -DomainName pwn.town -Restart
  • Accidentally provision a VM in the wrong subnet? The fix may be rebuilding the flippin' VM (more info in today's episode).

  • Just about every operation takes for freakin' ever. And it's confusing because if you delete objects out of the portal, sometimes they don't actually disappear from the GUI for like 5-30 minutes.

  • Using backups and snapshots is archaic. You can take a snapshot in the GUI or PowerShell easy-peasy, but if you actually want to restore those snapshots you have to convert them to managed disks, then detach a VM's existing disk, and attach the freshly converted managed disks. This is a nightmare to do with PowerShell.

  • Deleting data is a headache. I understand Azure is probably trying to protect you against deleting stuff and not being able to get it back, but they night a right-click > "I know what I'm doing, DELETE THIS NOW" option. Otherwise you can end up in situations where in order to delete data, you have to disable soft delete, undelete deleted data, then re-delete it to actually make it go away. WTH, you say? This doc will help it make more sense (or not).

Things that are broken

  • Promiscuous mode - just plain does not work as far as I can tell. So I can't do protocol poisoning exercises with something like Inveigh.

  • Hashcat - I got CPU-based cracking working in ESXi by installing OpenCL drivers, but try as I may, I cannot get this working in Azure. I even submitted an issue to the hashcat forums but so far no replies.

On a personal note, it has been good knowing you because I'm about to spend all my money on a new hobby: indoor skydiving.

Avsnitt(689)

7MS #128: Transparency is King

7MS #128: Transparency is King

In this episode, I talk about a restaurant infosec assessment I did, and how the recommendations coming out of that assessment didn't fit the standard "mold." I also talk about how being transparent and helpful - and NOT billing clients for every tiny little thing - is king.

27 Dec 20159min

7MS #127: Intro to HIPAA Assessments

7MS #127: Intro to HIPAA Assessments

This episode covers a few HIPAA tidbits I picked up while preparing for - and executing - a HIPAA security assessment.

27 Dec 20159min

7MS #126: Get Your Name Out There

7MS #126: Get Your Name Out There

This episode isn't about infosec exactly, but it talks about how using public resources like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs to boost your "brand" (though I hate that word) and help you get more connected to the infosec community, job leads and more!

24 Dec 20158min

7MS #125: Securing Your Life-Part 2

7MS #125: Securing Your Life-Part 2

Way back in episode #93, I talked about things you can do to secure your life (mortgage review, adequate insurance, estate planning, investments, etc.). This episode continues that train of thought and covers: getting the right amount of life insurance, getting the right home/auto coverage, as well as estate planning.

23 Dec 20157min

7MS #124: Sprinkles

7MS #124: Sprinkles

This episode is 90% a rant about how annoying carry-on luggage and air travel can be, and a 10% sprinkling of security sauce mixed in. Hence: sprinkles.

23 Dec 20158min

7MS #123: Doing a Redo Assessment

7MS #123: Doing a Redo Assessment

This episode talks about my experience in doing a "redo" security assessment, during which I struggled with the following questions: what's the best way to efficiently correct the erroneous information and make the customer happy without asking ALL the original questions over again? Especially when I have little to no time to prepare for the "redo" interview?

22 Dec 20159min

7MS #122: OFFTOPIC-An Apology to Elephants

7MS #122: OFFTOPIC-An Apology to Elephants

Preview76 wordsThis episode is about a documentary called An Apology to Elephants. It's all about the treatment (or mistreatment) of elephants, and the main message of the movie is, "Please don't go to the circus when it's in town, because you're supporting elephant abuse." Even if that message was a little heavy handed, I certainly will pass on tickets next time a circus act comes through town. You can subscribe to the 7 Minute Security podcast here.

20 Dec 20158min

7MS #121: Migrating from Tumblr to Ghost-Part 2

7MS #121: Migrating from Tumblr to Ghost-Part 2

Part 2 concludes my journey in moving 7ms.us from Tumblr to a Digital Ocean droplet running Ghost. Here are the key resources mentioned during the podcast: How to run multiple Ghost blogs on one DI VPS. The key takeaway here was that I had to upgrade to the $10 droplet (I did a "flexible" resize to add more proc/memory) and then the second instance of Ghost installed fine. Turning on CloudFlare SSL was easy. I chose flexible SSL since I wasn't using a "real" cert. I also wrote a rule to force HTTPs for all connections. And, just for grins, I turned on DNSSEC. Because...why not? :-) I picked a strong root password for my DI droplet, but I still don't like the idea of IPs banging on that connection all day and night. I followed this article on installing Fail2Ban to prevent my SSH login from being abused. There are a few IPs that I want to perma-ban, so I'm going to look throughthis article and this one which looks a tad easier. You can subscribe to the 7 Minute Security podcast here.

19 Dec 20158min

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