Pivoting Lab Setup

1. Home Lab Setup

This setup is meant to compliment a pivoting techniques session at DC864, but seemed to be comprehensive enough to be worth publishing by itself.

1.1. Install & Pre-Req Setup

Install VirtualBox
Install Vagrant
- note: Vagrant comes standard with VirtualBox support
Possibly need to add C:\Hashicorp\Vagrant\bin to windows env path
- And be sure to have other path variables set
Create a directory named shared in your home folder
Copy your id_rsa.pub from attacker box to the shared directory
Review diagram above for box naming

1.2. Creating Alpha Box

Create directory for the alpha box
- my example was mkdir ~/alpha
vagrant box add [link to vagrant cloud] - Vagrant cloud
- We are using ubuntu/focal64 so the above command would be vagrant box add ubuntu/focal64
vagrant init ubuntu/focal64 within the alpha box directory you created in step 6
configure Vagrantfile to the below source code
- I'm using emacs but feel free to use notepad, vscode, or whatever text editor
- yours will probably have a lot more comments then mine, feel free to just use the code below and delete all the comments
vagrant up
- we should be able to see it running now
- also, we need to know provision it to be a box worthy of lab running

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

 config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"
 # change the ~/shared/ if you changed the location or name of your shared dir in step 4
 config.vm.synced_folder "~/shared/", "/home/vagrant/shared"

 # this creates our two NICs in the diagram linked in step 6
 config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.100.12"
 config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.16.100.12", virtualbox__intnet: true

 # change id_rsa.pub if you changed the name of it when copying in step 5
 config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
     cat /home/vagrant/shared/id_rsa.pub >> /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys
   SHELL

end

1.3. Create Beta Box

Now we are creating a new directory (not within the alpha directory) called beta, I put mine in the ~/ home directory
vagrant init ubuntu/focal64 this will redownload, there is a way to link boxes/images but this is the most straightforward for now
Configured the Vagrantfile to the below source
vagrant up

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

 config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"
 # change the ~/shared/ if you changed the location or name of your shared dir in step 4
 config.vm.synced_folder "~/shared/", "/home/vagrant/shared"

 # this creates our one NICs in the diagram linked in step 6
 config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.16.100.13", virtualbox__intnet: true

 # change id_rsa.pub if you changed the name of it when copying in step 5
 config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
     cat /home/vagrant/shared/id_rsa.pub >> /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys
   SHELL

end

1.4. Test Lab Setup

And now, we can begin testing with our kali box if everything is setup
from the kali box, ping -c 3 192.168.100.12 and should be able to reach the box with ICMP received response
from the kali box, ping -c 3 172.16.100.12 and should have output "Destination Host Unreachable"
from within the alpha box directory, vagrant ssh
ping -c 3 172.16.100.13 and should be able to reach the box with ICMP received response
type exit in the vagrant ssh session
from within the beta box directory, vagrant ssh
ping -c 3 172.16.100.12 and should be able to reach the box with ICMP received response
ping -c 3 192.168.100.12 and should have output "Destination Host Unreachable"

2. Final Notes

Vagrant's documentation on VirtualBox
Do not manage these created by vagrant from your virtualbox interface
to shutdown the boxes, run vagrant halt within the directory the VM is located
And please ask questions, follow along with the pivoting technique overview, and have fun!