Crash dump

To operate the VM inconspicuously, obviously you don’t run the full-fledged VirtualBox GUI. VirtualBox can also be fully managed from its command-line interface, called VBoxManage (you can read the User Manual if you want to learn more about VBoxManage).

In what follows, I will discuss how you can set VirtualBox to run in headless mode, and also how to set the virtual machine running pfSense to automatically enter the ‘saved state’ mode when you shut your Windows host down, and how to make it automatically start again when you boot your host. Continue reading →

Time to move to the next step: configuring pfSense, so we can make sure that we are going to have connectivity once we strip our physical NIC from its TCP/IPv4 and TCP/IPv6 stacks. Mind you, in this part I will discuss only the minimal configuration required in order to have Internet connectivity, as this is not a tutorial about advanced pfSense operation. You should refer to the official documentation for that. Continue reading →

Note: if you need help with installing pfSense beyond the instructions included in this tutorial, you can always refer to the project’s official tutorials, wiki, and official forum, or even better, buy the manual available on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk (a Kindle edition is also available on each). Buying the book also means contributing financially to this amazing Open Source project. Continue reading →

Installing VirtualBox and creating a new virtual machine should not be a big deal:

1. Install VirtualBox with all the default options. It’s just a matter of clicking Next a few times.
2. Login on Windows as administrator. Browse to the folder where you have downloaded the VirtualBox Extension Pack and double-click it. Click Install.
3. Agree (you have to) with the TOS and you’re done. Continue reading →

The idea is to have the traffic ‘flowing’ through the laptop’s physical NIC to the virtual machine running pfSense, then back to the Windows host through the Loopback adapter.

In what follows, I will describe how to install the Microsoft Loopback adapter on Windows 7 (apparently it works the same for Vista). For other flavours of Windows, such as XP and 2000, 2003 Server, a very simple search will do the job. Continue reading →

Recently, I have been contemplating the idea of attending the Chaos Communication Camp in Germany, in order to learn more about information security first-hand. Yet, as outlined in their survival guide, going there without considering a high level of security for your laptop and phone, whatever the flavour of your OS, is not a pretty clever idea. For good reasons.

Mind you, apart from Windows 7, I cannot have any other properly configured OS on my laptop, due to hardware peculiarities (switchable graphic cards being one of them). Consequently, no Unix-like OS with nifty security features installed ‘bare metal’. Not just yet. Continue reading →