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nihilist - 00 / 00 / 00

Why do we need to Virtualize Machines

First let's start with the reasons why to virtualize a machine. The main reason to virtualize a machine is the ability to run multiple operating systems without impacting the host operating system. Virutal Machines(VMs) offer advantages of manageability and security, as well as the flexibility of running a separate operating system and non-native applications, making them ideal for software developers and testers. For example, a VM is isolated or "sandboxed" from the host system and other VMs, meaning that the software inside a VM can't escape or tamper with the computer itself. This produces an ideal environment for testing other operating systems including beta releases, accessing virus-infected data, creating operating system backups, and running software or applications on operating systems they weren't originally intended for.

How to Virtualize Machines(QEMU/KVM Hypervisor)

To get things started, we need to download QEMU. What is QEMU? QEMU, short for Quick Emulator,is a free and open-source emulator. You can download it from their offical website.Using QEMU throught the command line is troublesome, likely a tool called virt-manager makes the process of navigating QEMU much easier. To install virt-manager just type the following command.

sudo apt install virt-manager

After the installation is finished, virt-manager will look something like this.

Lets create a new virutal machine. I am creating a debian virtual machince, I already downloaded the .iso image from the offical debian website. All the steps will be displayed in the following images.

After clicking on "Finish", a virtual disk will be created to act as a hard-disk for the new VM.

Once the VM loads, you will go through the default debian installation process.

Spicing up Debian with KickSecure

What is KickSecure and why do we need it?Kicksecure is a hardened operating system designed to be resistant to viruses and various attacks. It is based on Debian in accordance with an advanced multi-layer defense model, thereby providing in-depth security. Kicksecure provides protection from many types of malware in its default configuration with no customization required. We will be morphing our fresh Debian installation.

First, we need to create a new group called console. Then add the your user to the console group

sudo addgroup --system console

I created a new user called user,but that's optional.

sudo adduser "your_username" console

After that,we need to install console related packages.

 sudo apt install console-data console-common kbd keyboard-configuration

Now, we will install extrepo to get the kicksecure APT repository. We will also enable the repository

  sudo apt install extrepo 

  sudo extrepo enable kicksecure 

To use apt over the tor network we need a package called apt-transport-tor

Next step is to download the kicksecure packages. Note that this will install a desktop environment(Xfce) and other applications

sudo apt install kicksecure-xfce-host

Finally, we need to enable the Kicksecure APT derivative.list in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/derivative.list

sudo repository-dist --enable --repository stable

This command will generate derivative.list file.

Disable the extrepo kicksecure APT repository. This is to avoid a duplicate Kicksecure repository.

 sudo extrepo disable kicksecure

That's it! A quick reboot will apply all the new settings and configurations.