This article assumes you are familiar with Vmware.
Until I find something better, Whax is my favorite White Hat
tool. It is a Swiss army knife with built in Swiss army knives
for computer security testing. What is even cooler about
Whax is that you can make it a virtual OS with Vmware.
This means you can use Whax to test a whole network of
virtual Operating Systems on a single PC. With enough RAM and
hardrive space, you can have a few different versions of
Windows and a few versions of Solaris on a
single computer being tested by Whax.
Here is how I loaded a virtual version of Whax on a Dell Latitude D600 laptop.
First of all, you'll need:
A Dell Latitude D600 (x86 system with at least 128Ram, 8 Gig HD, 1GHZ… need more RAM & HD for more OSes) See basic system requirements HERE.
Vmware 4.0.2 build-5592 (may work with other versions such as the FREE Vmware player)
Whax version 3 (should work with any version of Whax. Download free version of Whax HERE.)
Loading Whax on Vmware with the Vmware 4.0 Wizard:
Select File | New | choose “Custom”
Guest Operating System: Select “Linux” as the Guest Operating System
Virtual Machine Name: Whax (optional, I usually name this something to make it stand out from the other OSes)
Location: I chose the default location
Network Connection: This depends on what you are
trying to do and your network set up. It you have a
internetworking device that you want Whax to interface with with it own
IP address you will want to choose Network Address Translation.
Disk: Select “Create a new vitural disk”
Disk Capacity: As low as 1GB
Disk File: I usually rename the Disk file “Whax” so it can be distinguishable from other OSes you have loaded.
Edit Virtual Machine Settings:
I haven't been able to get the RAM below 128Megs, but maybe you'll have better luck than me.
The hard disk can be brought down to 1Gig perhaps even lower.
Whax can be run on VMware from an ISO on the desktop.
With this setting, Whax will run on VMware directly from the disk.
The elusive setting that initially stopped this Whax from working on
VMware was the “acceleration” feature that is turned on by default on
some versions of VMware. To modify this feature, click
on “Edit virtual machine settings” once your Whax Guest Operating
System is set up. From the “Virtual Machine Control Panel”
select the “Options” tab and select “Disable Acceleration” in the
Advanced options box.
On my Dell Latitude d600 the load time is very slow (as in takes a
total of about 5-10 minutes total to see the dragon), but I sure this
will be faster on a betters system. Good Luck.
Another Cool trick with VMWare can be found at baeke.info