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Explore the New Lab Features 0:04-1:18
In this demonstration, we're going to spend a few minutes talking about the lab exercises in this course. You may be familiar with LabSim already, but in this course, we're introducing a few new features, so you'll want to watch this demo.
When you start a lab exercise, you'll generally see a screen like this. We have a simulated a Kali Linux environment. Let's take a look at it. If you want to complete the lab and get everything right, you should read through this scenario very carefully. It'll usually begin by setting up the situation. It's telling you what's happened and what we're trying to do in the demo. Down here, it'll give you the specific tasks that you need to complete. For this lab, we need to crack the password on the Support computer and then crack the password on the ZIP file.
As you go through this lab exercise, you need to make sure that you complete each and every one of these requirements. When you're done with the lab, each task is evaluated, and how many you completed determines your score.
So, as you're working through the lab exercise, it's a really good idea to mentally check and say, "Okay, did I do this one? Yes. Did I do this one? Yes." If you've done everything listed here according to the scenario, you'll pass the lab exercise.
New Features 1:19-2:36
Now, our new lab features in this course are questions and copy and paste.
Let's start with questions. You may be required to perform a task and look for something specific. Over here, you'll see the Answer Questions tab. I have two questions that I'll need to answer while doing this lab. It's a very good idea to open this right after you read the scenario so you know what you're looking for while you perform the steps. This particular lab wants you to enter the password for the Linux Computer and the password for the protected.zip file.
Okay, now let's move on to the copy and paste feature. Let's open a terminal, and I'll type in 'ifconfig'. Now let's say, for example, that I want to copy and paste this MAC address, here. I can just highlight it like this, come down here, and right-click. When I do, it'll paste the text right here. Be aware you don't get a menu that asks you to paste; it just pastes the text when you right-click.
If there's some text over in the scenario, let's say a long password, you can also copy that and paste it somewhere else. So, as soon as I highlight the text, it's copied to the clipboard. Come over here, right-click, and it's pasted in. Let's close the terminal.
Programs Included 2:37-5:17
Now, within each lab, not everything is actually enabled within the simulation, only the components that you'll need to complete the scenario. So you might click on something and find that it doesn't actually work, or it might not do what you think it should do.
But we're going to look at some of the things that do work in this lab. Over here, we have our Favorite programs. The top one, here, is the Terminal. I'll open that up again. Now, be aware that many of the programs that come with Kali Linux and are launched from the terminal. For example, if the lab says to use nmap to do a scan, I can do that from here. Let's check our IP address really quick. I can do that by typing 'ifconfig' and pressing Enter. Right here, I can see my IP address of 192.168.0.45. We can also type 'ip addr' and press Enter to get our IP address.
Remember we launch nmap from the terminal; let's do that now. Just type in 'nmap' and press Enter. When you do that, you get a list of parameters that you can use. Right here are some examples of how to use nmap. Now let's scan our subnet. For that, type 'nmap 192.168.0.0/24' and press Enter. We just did a quick default nmap scan of our subnet, and we found all these devices that are live on the subnet.
To launch Metasploit, we'll type 'msfconsole' and press Enter, and it's launched.
Okay, let's close the terminal and look at a few of the GUI tools that are simulated. We have Ettercap here. There will be labs that require you to use Ettercap in the course. Let's close that and open up the next one, Zenmap.
Zenmap is basically a GUI version of nmap. It's used to scan networks. Let's close this and go to the next one, Wireshark.
To start a scan, we select our interface and click the shark fin up here. Let's open the terminal. I'll do an 'ifconfig' to confirm my IP address and ping this machine, so let's type in 'ping 192.168.0.45' and press Enter. Now let's go back to Wireshark and filter by ICMP, or our ping traffic, by typing in 'icmp' in the filter field. You can see we're getting all this ICMP traffic in Wireshark.
Let's go ahead and close these.
The Simulated Environment 5:18-6:37
Be aware that you may be required to open multiple programs or perform tasks on multiple systems. If this is the case, the scenario will tell you. This particular scenario only requires us to work on this one system, but there will be scenarios that will ask you to work on one, two, or more different systems. You might be asking, how do I change between systems? What you need to do is come up to the overview button, right here, and click on it. When you do, the entire office environment is displayed. The current system that you're working on is highlighted. Notice, down here, that the last system I was working on was named IT-Laptop. If you need to change to a different system somewhere else in the office, locate the appropriate system in the diagram, and then just click on it. For example, I'll click on the Office1 system. Now notice I'm in a different office, working on a completely different system. Let's go the IT-Laptop system.
Since this is a simulated environment, keep in mind that keyboard shortcuts might not work as expected. So, for example, if you want to enter Ctrl+Alt+Delete, you'll be sending that command to the actual system you're on, not the simulated system. Always look for text that lets you know how to perform the alternative to shortcuts; it's typically down here, at the bottom.
Complete the Lab 6:38-9:44
Now that we've looked at some of the new features, let's complete this lab. This lab tells us to crack some passwords with John the Ripper. I'll open the terminal and, at the prompt, I'll type in 'cd /usr/share/john' and press Enter. Now let's see what's in the folder. I'll type in 'ls' to do that.
One of the things I want to look at is the password.lst file. This will contain a list of passwords that John the Ripper will use to try to brute force and crack the system with. You can add to this list, delete passwords, and so on. To view the contents, I'll type in 'cat password.lst' and press Enter, and you can see the list is displayed. This is a short list of passwords, so be aware that normally, this will contain tens of thousands of passwords. I'll type 'cd' to get back to root, here, and then 'clear' to clear the screen.
To crack the password on the system, I'll type in 'john /etc/shadow' and press Enter. In this course, we'll learn that with Linux, the password is actually kept in the shadow file. Right up here, we can see that our password was cracked. As you might remember, that was one of the questions we need to answer, so let's click on Answer Questions. I'll type in my answer and minimize that box. I'll clear this screen again.
Down here, it says once you've cracked the password, you can't crack it a second time, so let's see if that's true. I'll type in 'john /etc/shadow' and press Enter, and this time, it's telling me there are no password hashes left to crack.
It also tells me that the results are located in the john.pot file, so let's look in there to view the password, just in case we forgot to answer our question. For that, I'll type in 'cat ./.john/john.pot', press Enter, and here are the results. An alternative is to type in 'john /etc/shadow/ --show', and you can see the password results again.
The next step says to crack the password of the protected.zip file on the IT-Laptop. Let's say, for some reason, we don't complete this part. I'll go back up to Answer Questions, type in an answer for the second password, and click on Score Lab, down here.
My results are displayed. I got 1 out of 4 complete, or 25%. I've been in the lab for about 30 minutes. Down here, it says I didn't correctly crack the password; however, I did correctly type in the right password as an answer. I didn't even attempt this next part, and I typed in some random answer right here. And down here is the real answer.
If I'm having issues, I can come down here, read this explanation, and review the correct steps I would need to take to complete the lab.
I can scroll down and click on the Done button; the grades are recorded in the gradebook.
Summary 9:45-10:10
That's it for this demonstration. In this demo, we talked about how to complete the lab exercises in this course. We looked at the scenario. We looked at the simulated Kali Linux environment. We discussed some new features in Labsim.
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