Cyber Security: Where to start?

Hello everyone!

I’m a Cyber Security Student at Macquarie University and I will be sharing my journey and how I started with Cyber Security. I’ll be sharing my experience and some of the things that helped me so be sure to follow me here as I’ll be sharing everything on Cyber Security that I can. This is just part 1 of many more to come.

Let’s get started with the basics, what kind of work is involved in Cyber Security? There’s a lot of different fields in cyber security like:

• Digital Forensics: This is usually done after a crime has occurred(not always a crime, some companies may hire you to investigate other activities as well) and involves you doing a investigation on the computers, phones or any electronic devices to recover digital evidence and give a report on the findings along with your professional opinion.
• Offensive and Defensive Security: Usually known as Red Teaming and Blue Teaming in CTF events. Red Teaming involves you trying to hack into a network whereas Blue Teaming involves you trying to protect the network from any attacks.
• Penetration Testing: This is the most common type of work and is similar to Offensive Security where after receiving permission from a party, you perform a series of tests to test the strength of their network and see if you can hack into it. You write up a report after and include your professional opinion.
• Open source Intelligence (OSINT): This can involve scouring the internet and any open source/publicly available information to find information about something or someone. OSINT challenges can be very fun to do but can get frustrating at times.
• IT Security Consulting: This job requires a lot experience in the field so it wouldn’t really be recommended to beginners since it involves consulting based on experience.
• and more…

I’ll leave you to explore them freely in your own time.

My Journey

I started with Offensive Security and for the most part, I really enjoy it. Sure, there are times that I get so frustrated but it all works out in the end. The most important part in Cyber Security is that you have to be very patient and very thorough. Just trust me on this, the amount of times I’ve wanted to punch my screen, well those are stories for another time but for now, remember to be very patient.

One of my first steps was to have a workstation and for that, the community recommends Kali Linux OS. In summary, Kali Linux is a Linux Distribution which has a lot of hacking tools pre-installed. You don’t need a lot in terms of computer hardware and for fairly decent performance, I would recommend using a computer with at least a 4 core CPU, 8gb RAM and around 40 GB free storage to start with. This process may take around an hour.

• I’m assuming you have a windows machine with windows 10 installed and Hyper-V disabled(Hyper-V must be disabled for the installation to work).
• To disable HyperV, open Powershell in Administrator mode, type in the command below and restart your computer (Source):

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
To turn it back on:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

Installing VirtualBox

Search on your favorite search engine (mine is DuckDuckGo) for virtualbox. The first link should be Oracle VM VirtualBox so click on that, head over to their downloads page and click on Windows hosts.

After downloading the installer, Install VirtualBox using the default settings by following along with the installer.

Installing Kali Linux

Next, let’s download the Kali Linux ISO. Search for Kali Linux and go to the downloads page. You need to check for 2 things:

• Make sure the file has Installer next to it
• You can choose whether you want the 32 or 64 bit Installer according to your system. You can check which one your system is by searching About your PC using the windows key and looking under System type.

Kali Linux ISO is about 4 GB in size so while it downloads, make sure one of your drives has about 40 GB free storage for Kali Linux.

After the download is complete, start up VirtualBox, click on New, give it a name and it should automatically set some of the options below for you (If it doesn’t, go ahead and copy mine). Select the drive where you have the 40 GB of free space and click next.

Choose the amount of RAM you would like to allocate when using the Virtual Machine (VM). I have 16 GB RAM so I can allocate more but on your system, make sure the slider is where the green bar ends as shown in the picture and hit next.

The next option will mention a virtual hard disk so select Create a virtual hard disk now. Stick with the defaults, choose VDI (Virtual Disk Image) and then choose Dynamically allocated. Make sure the folder is on the drive with the 40 GB free space and then set the number on the right hand side to 40 GB.

Now that this is done, you will see your VM in VirtualBox so click on it then click Settings and set the following options.

Under System, make sure Floppy is unticked in Boot order. Click on the Processor Tab in system and move the slider for Processors if you want better performance to the end of the green line as shown below.

And finally, go to Storage and click on the icons as shown in the image in order. After clicking add, select the location of the Kali Linux ISO you downloaded and select the ISO file, click choose and then OK. Click on the Kali Linux and hit start in VirtualBox.

Once you start a VM, you probably won’t be able to use your cursor or ALT+TAB out of the VM, so to be able to use the cursor, you need to make sure you press your Host Key (which was Right CTRL for me) to start using the Windows cursor instead of the VM Cursor. You can check your Host Key at the bottom right corner of the VM window.

Follow these steps for the installation:

• Select Graphical Install → Select language, location and keyboard → Wait a little→ Give a hostname → Leave Domain name empty → Give your name and choose a username to login with → Select a password → Select state → Select Guided — use entire disk → There should only be 1 option with ~40gb so select that → Choose All files in one partition (recommended for new users) → make sure Finish partitioning and write changes to disk is selected and click continue → Select Yes to confirm write changes to disk and then click continue.

Wooh! That was a lot of steps. Now just sit back, relax and let it do its thing. Check back in about 5–10 mins and follow the next steps:

• Stick with default settings in Software Selection and click continue → Stay with the default display manager and continue → Wait about 20 mins for installation → Select Yes for Grub Boot installation → Select /dev/sda and continue → Click continue again and installation is complete!

The VM will reboot and then give you 2 options. Press Enter on the Kali GNU/Linux option and wait for the login screen. Select your user and enter the password you chose. You have installed Kali Linux and are almost ready to start hacking!!!

If you want to close the VM, just close the window using the close button on the top of the window and it will give you a few options. Select Power off the machine. I’ll discuss the other options in my next post.

I’ll be sharing more soon on the Kali Linux setup and where to go next so please be sure to follow me and leave some responses if you have any questions.