Cyber Security setup

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Hope you are well.

 

One of schools I look after does a Cyber Security course, its one of their specialisms.

 

They were using a Hypervisor with VMs for this but I think its starting to struggle a bit.

 

In an ideal world they would have their own isolated room, with their own servers, desktops etc. But not sure they are going to get this anytime soon.

 

What do other schools do for this?

 

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[mavhc]

Do you have the requirements for the course? A specification?

[Theldron]

Do you have the requirements for the course? A specification?

 

Not yet, I have asked the teacher for them. I just didn't know if there was a general setup that schools did. I know they want to do penetration testing.

[Areku]

We had a simalar need, in the end we opted for a rollable "lab" basically its a cab on wheels, with a VM host (VM's being the exploitable targets), managed switch, and an aruba instant 505 AP.

In addition we repurposed older laptops, as the student client machines and placed them in a trolley next to it.

 

All machine macs have been blocked from the main network, (yes I know its not perfect)

 

 

When they have need, the roll both out, plug it in (power) and everything including the VM's fire up. after a few moments the AP broadcasts the Lab wifi

They then are able to run though the lesson, at the end of the lesson teacher his the power on the VM host, which gracefully shuts down the VM's and powers off.

 

Only issue I've really had is when the laptops needed pip installing... was a bit of a nightmare as everything was blocked from access the main network.

[Theldron]

We had a simalar need, in the end we opted for a rollable "lab" basically its a cab on wheels, with a VM host (VM's being the exploitable targets), managed switch, and an aruba instant 505 AP.

In addition we repurposed older laptops, as the student client machines and placed them in a trolley next to it.

 

All machine macs have been blocked from the main network, (yes I know its not perfect)

 

 

When they have need, the roll both out, plug it in (power) and everything including the VM's fire up. after a few moments the AP broadcasts the Lab wifi

They then are able to run though the lesson, at the end of the lesson teacher his the power on the VM host, which gracefully shuts down the VM's and powers off.

 

Only issue I've really had is when the laptops needed pip installing... was a bit of a nightmare as everything was blocked from access the main network.

 

Hiya this is something I have been toying with the idea. Do they have internet access?

[Areku]

No they don't, hence it was an issue getting pip installed.

[Theldron]

No they don't, hence it was an issue getting pip installed.

 

Fair enough. That has given me a basis to start thanks very much for that.

[PotNoodleTech]

If they are using a hypervisor with VMs that is the opmtimal soloution so just sounds like the server is not beefy enough to cope with the number of clients? Should be able to be solved by fitting a better server more cores/ram/ssds? I am assuming this is a hypervisor on your existing main school VM host - it could be better as people has said above to totally seperate the system onto a new server.

[Theldron]

If they are using a hypervisor with VMs that is the opmtimal soloution so just sounds like the server is not beefy enough to cope with the number of clients? Should be able to be solved by fitting a better server more cores/ram/ssds? I am assuming this is a hypervisor on your existing main school VM host - it could be better as people has said above to totally seperate the system onto a new server.

 

Hiya, yeah we have our own Hypervisor for this which is completely separate from the main network, but its about 7 years old now. Student use hyper-v on their school computers to access the VMs.

 

It has 2 x Intel Xeon's E5-2620 V4

192GB RAM

4TB drive space

[jmak]

What are you doing to prevent network/internet access through hyper-v networking if they're using their normal school laptops to connect to the VMs?

[Theldron]

What are you doing to prevent network/internet access through hyper-v networking if they're using their normal school laptops to connect to the VMs?

 

Sorry is that for me or Areku?

 

If me, they use Hyper-v to access the hypervisor VMs no their desktops. The hypervisor and VMs are on a separate IP range and does not have access to the network. I think the server is on a separate VLAN. Sorry I didn't set it up just inherited it.

[Areku]

If it was for me, then.. its a separate physical network and devices, with no net access.

[jmak]

Sorry is that for me or Areku?

 

If me, they use Hyper-v to access the hypervisor VMs no their desktops. The hypervisor and VMs are on a separate IP range and does not have access to the network. I think the server is on a separate VLAN. Sorry I didn't set it up just inherited it.

If it was for me, then.. its a separate physical network and devices, with no net access.

It was for Theldron [emoji846]

[dhaughton99]

At one of the schools I helped, they didn’t have the budget for a dedicated setup either, so we repurposed some older desktops as thin clients and hooked them up to a central server running Proxmox. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave students a solid mix of hands-on experience without pushing the hardware too hard. For basics, we also set up a small Raspberry Pi cluster, which worked surprisingly well for teaching networking and some security concepts. It’s not the dream setup, but it got the job done.