Zero-to-Homelab

Inspiration

The inspiration of this project comes from a mix of kali linux's built in tool system and with the great growth of cybersecurity as a career. With the big growth in cybersecurity many people are ready to want to learn more tools in a fun non damaging way. Unlike kali-linux there isnt a widely known homelab service that has many of the tools you need already configured and ready to start up. With a package like zero-to-homelab, many that want a homelab but not go through the setup can use this service.

What it does

the script takes preconfigured virtual machines and mounts the backedup proxmox vms onto the users proxmox machine while also configuring the needed bridges and ovs-bridges to allow for isolated access through the hacking ovs-bridge. In the end the user can start any of the virtual machines as they need with all just executing one preconfigured script.

How we built it

I used the used of Proxmox as the hypervisor of choice as I personally think its great for bare metal virtualization including its many in house utilities for networking. I then chose to use Kali Linux purple for the built in red and blue team applications. Windows Server and Windows 10 is fully configured with an Active Directory service running and a user account on the Windows 10 machine to simulate a small business. The last VM I had the time to include is pfSense for its routing and firewall capabilties. PfSense was the big reason why this network was isolated, making it easier for my bash script to deploy everything no matter the network connectivity the host has.

Challenges we ran into

I honestly ran into a good about of problems during this project with the biggest being VMWare which was the service i chose to use to run Proxmox during the event. VMWare itself is great but one small mis-configured setting set me hours behind as my Proxmox server couldn't access the internet so any VMs that needed internet connectivity to finish installing or containers that used curl or docker to deploy was out of the question for a good amount of the competition. Another problem I had was with the scripts not being able to fully transfer onto the new Proxmox server without a no bootable drive loop error.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud I was able to learn use this technology in a way I haven't before in a restricted amount of time. I was able to get the product finished in time and in around 20 mins you can have a full fledged Home lab for yourself. I'm proud I was able to create a service that, not on a large scale, can be impactful to people in cybersecurity who may not know where to start and I personally know some people that would benefit form this.

What we learned

Biggest skill I learned was time management. I've never been in a situation where threes been such an restriction in time managing how much time your gonna spend on a certain aspect compared. Always making small goals and coming in with a plan is what I learned early one and has let me to have a finished product in the end.

What's next for Zero-to-Homelab

Next on the list is going to be adding more containers and virtual machines. My big picture of Zero-to-Homelab is that you could have different flavors that gears to more red teaming, blue teaming or even for personal use. Having a way for the installation of the VMs to be created even before the user gets to login would streamline the process alot aswell.

Built With

• bash
• networking
• proxmox