Lesson 6.1: Building a safe practice lab
Where you may practise legally: your own isolated lab of virtual machines, and the platforms built for it. Virtual machines, hypervisors, snapshots, host-only networks, attack boxes and deliberately vulnerable targets, and the mistakes that turn a lab into a real incident. In the lab you check that your practice machine really is isolated (no route out, the internet unreachable), find your targets inside the lab network and write down an inventory.
17 min
You will learn to
- Explain virtual machines, hypervisors and snapshots
- Design an isolated lab network
- Verify isolation with ip route and ping
- Discover and record the machines in your lab
- Name legal places to practise
Key terms
- Virtual machine (VM)
- A complete computer simulated in software, with its own operating system, running on your real computer.
- Hypervisor
- The software that runs virtual machines.
- Snapshot
- A saved state of a VM you can return to in seconds.
- Host-only network
- A virtual network that connects VMs to each other and your computer, with no route to your home network or the internet.
- Attack box
- The VM you test from, with security tools installed.
- Deliberately vulnerable target
- A system built with holes on purpose, so you can practise finding them.
- Practice platform
- A website that gives you legal targets and challenges.
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