Ubuntu Environment¶

We’ll be setting up a Security DevOps (SecOps) sandbox server to experiment with various DevOps tools and approaches.

Credential details are in a LastPass secure note titled Dell SecOps Desktop Server.

Additional details:

Server Name: wakanda
Server IP: 192.168.0.30
Ubuntu Version: 20.04

Important

Remember that all the port numbers mentioned will need to be forwarded on your router so that your local browser can access them with the server’s dynamic host name. In our case, that’s wakanda.zapto.org which is set up on no-ip.com

Important

Credential details are in a LastPass secure note titled Dell SecOps Desktop Server.

Helpful Ubuntu Commands¶

Configuring xTerm¶

Create a file in your home directory named .Xresources to store your preferences for various X programs.
Append a line to the file such as

xterm*font:     *-fixed-*-*-*-18-*

This informs xterm to use the ‘fixed’ font at size 18. From here, you can either restart X or run

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

in a terminal to incorporate the changes you’ve made. All new xterms should now have the font change. If you run ‘man xterm’ and go down to the RESOURCES section, you can find a wealth of additional, configurable xterm options.

Add/Remove Users¶

# add a user
sudo adduser <user_name>

# remove a user
sudo userdel <user_name>

Install a Java JDK¶

In order to get Maven to properly compile files, you need to have a JDK installed vs. a JRE. Details for this section come from this article, ‘How to Install Java on Ubuntu’

 # First update the system
 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

 # Install the package
 sudo apt-get install default-jdk

 # Check which versions of Java you have installed
 update-alternatives --config java

 Sample Output:
   Selection    Path                                            Priority   Status

  * 0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java      1101      auto mode
    1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java      1101      manual mode
    2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1081      manual mode

 # To set JAVA_HOME to a new path copy/paste path to exclude 'bin/...'
 export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64

 # If you're trying to set up Maven to use this, confirm it has picked up this change
 mvn -version

 Sample Output:

 Maven home: /usr/share/maven
 Java version: 10.0.1, vendor: Oracle Corporation
 Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64
 Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
 OS name: "linux", version: "4.15.0-30-generic", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"

# To make JAVA_HOME update permanent
nano /etc/environment

# update $JAVA_HOME variable with new path

Shodan CLI Setup¶

# Installs as part of the python install
sudo pip install shodan

# on my Ubuntu system, the executable ended up in ./.local/bin so
# edit .bashrc and add that to the path
export PATH=$PATH:./.local/bin

# Initialize Shodan with your API key. You can find this under
# your `shodan <(https://www.shodan.io/)>`_ login. Click on 'My Account' once logged in
shodan init <api-key>

Installing Searchsploit¶

The following was pulled from the Exploit-DB web page for Linux.

“searchsploit”, [is] a command line search tool for Exploit-DB that also allows you to take a copy of Exploit Database with you, everywhere you go. SearchSploit gives you the power to perform detailed off-line searches through your locally checked-out copy of the repository. This capability is particularly useful for security assessments on segregated or air-gapped networks without Internet access.

git clone https://github.com/offensive-security/exploitdb.git /opt/exploitdb

# Add /opt/exploitdb to ~/.bashrc path
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/exploitdb

Make Ubuntu do nothing when laptop lid closes¶

To make Ubuntu do nothing when laptop lid is closed:

Open the /etc/systemd/logind.conf file in a text editor as root, for example,

sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf
# or
sudo -H gedit /etc/systemd/logind.conf

Add a line HandleLidSwitch=ignore (make sure it’s not commented out!)
Restart the systemd daemon with this command:

sudo restart systemd-logind
# or, from 15.04 onwards:
sudo service systemd-logind restart

Tip

The first time I did this the laptop display blanked out and didn’t turn back on even after closing and reopening the lid. A reboot brought it back, but I ended up having to do this by SSH’ing into it from another laptop.