Installing VirtualBox in Windows, OS X and Linux

When we are practicing our ethical or white hat hacking skills and techniques, it is important to do so in a safe environment. The laws that govern computer crimes are somewhat broad to encompass any kind of unauthorized access. This can even be something as simple as scanning a device, even if you meant no mal-intent. If someone catches you doing it, you could end up with some serious jail time and hefty fines. I encourage you to get familiar with the laws around ethical and white hat hacking if you are going to pursue this type of work either professionally or as a hobby. It could end up saving you in the long run.

But back to my point. It is important to have a safe environment where you can practice your skills. Hence, the need for a lab. A hacking lab is the best way to test yourself and practice new techniques without getting into any legal entanglements. With the magic of virtualization, we can accomplish this task using free tools and open-source software. The tool that I will be covering specifically will be VirtualBox by Oracle. There are other virtualization softwares out there such as VMware and Hyper-V, but my favorite one to use is VirtualBox. It is robust, easy to install, and completely free for everyone. What’s not to love? I will be covering how to install VirtualBox in Linux, Windows and OS X.

Installing VirtualBox in Windows and OS X

Installing VirtualBox in Windows is very straight forward. All you have to do is navigate to https://www.virtualbox.org/ and click on the big “Download Virtualbox” button in the middle of your screen.

You will be prompted to select a “platform package” to download. Basically what this is asking is what operating system your host or main computer is. For this section we are going to select the “Windows hosts” option, but it would be the same process for “OS X” hosts as well.

Once the file is downloaded, find it in whatever folder you downloaded it to and run it ( typically by double-clicking on it). It will take you through a setup wizard.

If you are a beginner, stick with all the defaults and just run right through the setup. You can make changes to it later if you want, but for now, let’s keep it simple.

Just hit “Next >” all the way through.

It will give you a prompt to say that it will reset your network connection. This is an important and necessary step for Virtualbox. Do not worry, your machine should reconnect to the Internet after the reset, but if it doesn’t do so automagically, you can always reconnect later. You will need to select the “Yes” option here.

Click the “Install” option.

Once you get to this point, my recommendation is that you check the “Always trust software from ‘Oracle Corporation’ “ option and click “Install”. This will save you some time down the road. If you went to the official Oracle Virtualbox website at https://www.virtualbox.org/ and you made sure that it had an “https”, then this file should be safe and you should allow it to install.

Click “Finish” and now Virtualbox should be all setup. If you left the “Start Oracle VM Virtualbox” checkmark option checked, it should open up the program automatically.

Installing Virtualbox in Linux

For you Linux users out there, you are in luck. The process is very simple and straight forward. We are going to be doing the install via the terminal because I find that it is easiest this way and you need to get comfortable using the terminal if you are going to actively pursue knowledge in ethical hacking. Open up your terminal and type this command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential dkms

Once the build essentials are installed we are going to go ahead and install virtualbox with this command:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

Give that a few minutes. The time it takes to install varies depending on internet speed and processing power and so on. Just let it do it’s thing and we’ll be on our merry way. After the installation has completed, simply type:

virtualbox

This will open up the program for you and you can begin adding machines and configuring your network which we will go over in the next tutorial.

I hope that you all found this information useful and easy to follow. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below. I will try to get to them as soon as possible. Please be aware that I do have a full-time job however, and I can’t always get to questions and comments right away. If you are knowledgeable and see a question that you can answer, please help your fellow hackers out. I want to create an open and helpful community of ethical hackers here on Steemit where we can support each other and learn together. Until next time… cheers!