"Practicing" with a home network...

Hey, I searched around for some info on this on the site and found a similar thread but I have some more newbishly specific questions, and I didnt wanna bump an old thread and annoy some people...

Anyways:

I currently have two desktops (one fairly new and pretty fast, the other very old and very slow), both dual booting windows and redhat 9 connected to eachother and the internet via a wireless network through a router connected to a cable connection. I am also going to be purchasing a laptop soon...
I have been really wanting to experiment with some exploits and try out some port scanning and packet sniffing etc.. and maybe even see if i can set up one as a fake little honeypot and see how it works by trying to get into it with the other computer, and just generally do lots of experimenting to see how things work haha.
But, I really am not sure how to go about this...i'm really not sure how I would set up a sufficient network between the two or soon 3 computers.
I was just hoping someone could offer me some advice on setting up the network between the two and what I would need to do to accomplish some experimenting...

i'm sorry if this is a bit of an annoying question, but even the most general response would be very helpful and appreciated :)!

thanks

http://happyhacker.org

cool, ill look around there, thanks!

i guess i should have looked around on other sites first....sorry about that :\

[edit] - is there any way i can set up a similar network to the direct ethernet cable connection described on that site with the wireless network from a router? I know I would have to change alot around, and maybe even eliminate the router (?)....but...uh...i'm not so sure lol..
also, that whole "hacker lab" thing is completely dedicated to windows...im looking to do this through linux

Ok so you want to setup a linux wargame network so you can practice your hacking skills. hmmm... my guess is first thing to do is YOU learn how to network them, because that is the first and most important part of hacking or computers networking.

I've set up a few of these myself but if your really interested, 1. do your homework 2. buy a few books on linux and maybe hacking 3. get your friends into it, Hacking in a group (legally ofcause) is a lot more fun, challenging and you will learn alot more.

By the way b4 any question, goto www.google.com and have atleast a 5 min search

my 3 cents

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and try out some port scanning

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Nmap

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and packet sniffing

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Ethereal

As far as experimenting... A standard skiddie attack is to first scan a computer for open ports and vulnerabilities, find if there are exploits for those services, then grab the exploit code from the net (using Google or some other search) and execute it. A popular vuln scanner is Nessus... Now you can scan the computer and try to get in. If it succeeds, try and fix the hole or find a way of preventing it from happening. It's really just a matter of tooling around and trying a lot of different stuff. Oh, and don't forget to have fun in the process. :)

Reading material:
http://www.bitpipe.com/data/tlist?b=..._BLAT_Security
http://www.sans.org/rr/
AntiOnline :D

And Google is your friend, as Modderfokker pointed out.

mjk

thanks alot guys!
I already have used nmap and nessus, and ethereal a bit, I was just looking for advice on setting up a "Hacker lab" with my 2 computers on a wireless network with my current set up...
But i guess youre right modderfokker, I really probably should just look around and try to figure it out from the base for myself. I was just hoping for someone to get me started with a bit of a general idea of what exactly it is I am going to have to do ... haha i am lost :(

Thanks for your help everyone....im off to start searching for some texts to read about networking basics haha :)

You might also want to take a look at a MS system. You can download a trial copy of Win2k3 server so that you can get some experience.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...lkit.mspx#EEAA

I suggest ditching Redhat for something like Knoppix STD. You can boot from the CD and it has many security tools and documentation pre compiled and installed..Ready to run.
Airsnort and Kismet in particular ( you mentioned wireless ).

www.knoppix-std.org

Well, if you wanna mess around and see what all you can do as suggested before you could check out nessus... and nmap ver. 3.50 would be good too.

For wireless WEP cracking if you wanna see if you can break into your own Wi-Fi network from outside the LAN and you're using WEP inside the LAN try AirSnort (also suggested before) and/or look into WEPCrack. With AirSnort if I remember correctly you'll need to passively capture around 5-10 million packets and after that time it will make some guesses on what the Key is from the packets captured and analyzed. As far as the sniffing goes you could use Ethereal but I've got some captured packets in the past that were a tad inaccurate. Ethereal has a capture and display filter that are both powerful and you can use pcre's around them and some boolean logic to narrow down your results specifically to what you want. Like for example using 'ip.addr==IP Address goes here' in the display filter would only display ip-layer traffic (including ICMP, IGMP etc) and up to transport-layer UDP & TCP. It would ignore the lower Ethernet II traffic though you'll probably want to see that so it's up to you what filtering rules you'll want to use. With Ethereal you'll need WinPCap for Windows or LibPCap if you're running it from RedHat.

You might also want to try EtterCap which is a powerful sniffer for Switched-LANS (can even sniff ciphered protocols) and has some decode support there too... or even try CommView for Windows, it's pretty nice and I've yet to see one inaccurately captured/displayed packet (all GUI). Only thing is if you go with CommView with their "Trial" you'll only be capturing half of the packets as that is the trial limitation (really sucks). There's ways around that though. :D There's others but these were the ones worth mentioning. Good luck with your experimentation.

http://www.insecure.org to get NMap. (Nix & NT/XP/2K)

www.commview.com to get CommView. (Windows)

http://ettercap.sourceforge.net to get EtterCap. (Nix & NT/XP/2K)

http://winpcap.polito.it/ to get WinPCap. You'll want to get 3.0 or earlier if you're using NMap with it. 3.1's incompatible with NMap 3.50 but they do offer a patch in C that'll fix that. Save yourself the time and use 3.0. 3.1 isn't much different. (Windows NT/XP/2K)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wepcrack/ to get WEPCrack. (Nix)

Which ever you choose your OS to be (Windows/Redhat sounds fine) make sure you explore it inside out. I continue to (even though I've been doing it for awhile) explore my home network's machine's (which is Win98/Me and OpenBSD). Experimenting only on your home network is key as you could and would probably get in trouble if done otherwise. So be sure to study your OS inside out.

And if you want to see an OS that is actually secure out of the box.... put OpenBSD on one of your computers. All gloating aside (I am also an IRIX fan, the worst security record...), it is very instructional to poke around OpenBSD and see what it is about a default load that makes it more secure than any other flavor of Linux, BSD, or UNIX.

You might also want to download a copy of Solaris 10 Preview (http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/), it has some pretty interesting security features; not to mention Sun's firewall 'SunScreen' which is pretty darn good (and scalable, joy!).

-- bumblehead

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put OpenBSD on one of your computers. All gloating aside (I am also an IRIX fan, the worst security record...), it is very instructional to poke around OpenBSD and see what it is about a default load that makes it more secure than any other flavor of Linux, BSD, or UNIX.

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Gotta say I agree with that :D I hafta say, during my venture with OpenBSD, I have yet to have any major security infacture's or problem's. All of the one's I get is your common every day port scan's/probe's and whatnot.

thanks everyone!
i will be sure to try OpenBSD and Solaris....i never even thought of experimenting with different OSes before haha...thanks :)

Heres a newb question for yah (sorry):
If i scan a computer on my network from another computer on my network using its LAN ip, will that give me the proper results? Would that be the same thing as if i didnt have a firewall/router and was scanning the computer from outside the network (thats what I want..)?

It depends how your router is configured, really.

It's possible for a router to be configured to treat traffic originating outside the LAN much more strictly.
For example, you might have an "access list" which tells your router to refuse any telnet connection request originating from an IP outside your LAN, but to allow telnet sessions to be made between LAN hosts without complaint.
This would make it appear that you are vulnerable to telnet attacks when in fact your router protects against them. (Not that you should rest easy - more security is better!)

If you have a dinky Linksys router like most home users, it should be fairly easy to figure out how it is configured via the web-based GUI.
If you have a full-blown command line configurable router, well, you've got a lot to learn. :) If you let us know what router you're using, maybe we can help further.

its a microsoft MN-700 wireless base station

I hope I'm not stealing anyone's thunder, but I found MsMitten's wargame PDF a wealth of information.

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hlight=wargame

Looking at one of your earlier posts you mention a direct connection between 2 pc's, using your wireless connection. You should be able to set this up quite easily using the adhoc option. This will anable you to make a direct connection to another pc just as if you were using a crossover wired connection.

I'm not familiar with your router. But if it is acting as a network switch within your home network enviroment and only routing to the internet, you should be able to scan etc, with no problems on your wlan.

thanks alot jinxy! haha thats exactly what i was wanted to know.

thanks for everyones help...you all gave me alot of really good information :)