[Ken Milligan]

22/06/2020 at 11:12 am

Has anyone on here actually managed to establish the required hardware and software resources to deliver this in a school environment yet? I’ve been told by the local authority that my best (only) option is to do all of the ethical hacking and network security stuff in a virtual cloud based environment, but this flies in the face of the guidance provided in the documentation for the course. I’m not even convinced that this could be possible, but that’s my ignorance of current cloud capabilities more than anything more concrete, I confess.
I’ve got 18 pupils currently giving me some good work on the data security unit and really want to make sure we can do the rest of the course properly, so any useful feedback would be fantastic on this topic.

[Ken Milligan]

22/06/2020 at 7:38 pm

OK, the initial word from Google seems positive, they reckon they provide cloud based facilities for a number of universities in this field. I’ll update as progress is made…

[Ian Simpson]

22/06/2020 at 7:55 pm

We use old desktops maxed out RAM wise and running Virtual Boxes with the required images (Kali Linux). Works really well.

There is no way IT would allow these to access the wider network or Internet but this is fine. I think the practical tasks could be better but I have no time to develop them at present. I use Cyber Lesson Live online resources to give students more practical experience in the meantime.

Plus plenty of great documentaries on YouTube to break up the theory. Running level 5 for third year this year and have two students attempting level 6.

[Viv MacDonald]

04/08/2020 at 12:48 pm

I am doing a virtual delivery to pupils in the West Highlands across several different schools. Having just tried to work with the instructions in the Ethical Hacking Practical booklet and my daughter’s Chromebook I am not feeling confident about getting all level 5 students up and running and I have no direct links with the schools to know what kind of resources they have (like any old desktops etc). Any input, advice?

[David Fagan]

11/08/2020 at 8:51 am

Hello Ken,

Has there been any follow up from the communication with google?

[Ken Milligan]

20/08/2020 at 10:57 am

Hi All,

Response from Google eventually came back with suggestions of building systems with 3rd party providers and, bottom line, crazy cost implications for the requirements of this course. Have gone back to local authority to discuss using their Azure provision to create VMs on which we can run VirtualBox machines, will report back once those discussions move forward.

KM

[Ken Milligan]

23/09/2020 at 1:24 pm

Positive conversation with Microsoft engineers this morning who reckon we should be able to come up with some virtualised solution to enable kids to complete hacking tasks. Will post again as soon as a solution is delivered.

[Ian Simpson]

23/09/2020 at 3:44 pm

Thanks Ken, virtualization is definitely a good option however will your PCs have enough RAM capacity to run the VM? I’m really concerned some schools have begun to teach it (under duress) with no suitable hardware for the practical element.

[Ken Milligan]

05/11/2020 at 12:12 pm

Hi All,

Progress report – we now have an AZURE virtual machine which I am trying to work with, however VirtualBox is throwing errors because we cannot seem to implement hardware accelleration which is required to create 64bit Kali or Metasploitable machines. While Microsoft and Stirling Council are working to address this issue, yesterday I had an epiphany….

Since all pupils will have Chromebooks across our council area (thank you Covid) we have a pile of laptops which have suddenly become redundant. I started work cleaning one of these up to make it into a dedicated hacking lab yesterday, as this is clearly the sort of solution expected by the course writers. While the VM is clearly an infinitly sexier solution, repurposing existing hardware is looking like being a much simpler job, and given we have the machines sitting idle on a shelf, one I’m tending to regard as the way to go now.