I’m going to start off by listing my ‘accomplishments’ two weeks into this journey. I have revived my eight-year old laptop and installed Kali Linux on it. I have installed a few Virtual Machines onto my main PC for the purposes of getting field experience. I have both Windows 7 and 8 (downloaded from Microsoft), Metasploitable (download from SourceForge) and Kali Linux (downloaded from Kali.org). I also have an Android x86 VM (downloaded from OSBoxes) that looks interesting.
I had intended to use Kali on my laptop to exploit the Metasploit VM on my main PC through my home network, but I wasn’t confident that I wouldn’t just destroy my PC inadvertently. Even now, my AV program goes nuts when I have the Kali VM open. I think it is just Kali connecting to the internet (kali.download) and Avast isn’t having any of it. So I have set all the VMs to the ‘NAT’ network adapter setting in the Virtual Machine Settings as a few guides advised, but I think I will go back and readdress this issue before I get going with the exploits. Just to be certain.
I made a spur of the moment purchase on EBay. I bought an SDR dongle? Adapter? Adapter seems right. In Ebay-speak is it is listed as ‘RTL-SDR RTL2832 TCXO HF Biast SMA Software Defined Radio Receiver Antennas Tuner Set’. Which, to my non-existent SDR experience, seems to be a standard spec system for the $35-$40 price point. I vaguely remember seeing a DefCon talk hosted by an Australian (I think) who used SDR to map the location of planes using their radio signatures or something like that. That isn’t what I’d be interested in doing with it, but the fact that something of that scale could be achieved with something so innocuous piqued my interest. It made me think of what other things are going on in the airwaves around me that I don’t know about.
Let’s see, I think my Youtube habits have also moved towards the techno side of things. I’ve subbed to a few people who discuss technology, computing, programming, etc. Makers who build things with technology. Hackers -cough- security professionals, who demonstrate how to accomplish tasks and methods to prevent these tasks being accomplished by bad actors. The way I see it, is it’s easier to fight against something if you know how they are fighting. Or maybe something I read somewhere said that. Which seems more likely.
I hope to release these posts with more detail as I get into the thick of it to really give myself a better chance at retaining and reusing the information later on. I do want to say, though, there is something that I know I can do quite well, and that is procrastinate. GG.
My Tech Genesis 