CYBERSECURITY JOB HUNTING GUIDE
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      • Install a Canary Token
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      • DeepBlueCLI (logs Powershell, free)
      • Raccine (ransomware protection, free)
      • Install RITA (detects C2 traffic, free)
      • Sandboxes >
        • Joe's Sandbox
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      • SIEM Graylog >
        • Getting started with Graylog
        • Install Graylog
        • Graylog Windows agent
        • Graylog Linux agent
        • Graylog as application
      • Suricata with RangeForce
      • Identifying IoCs with RangeForce
      • What2Log
  • Certifications, Degree & Courses
    • Overview
    • Free & Affordable Resources
    • Pick your cert
    • Skill Assessment
    • Get a cheap degree
  • (Employment) fraud & scams
    • Suspicious Offer
    • Second Offer
    • Certification Scams
    • Fraud with courses
  • Analyzing a job ad
    • The Header
    • Building a Bridge
    • The Responsibilities
    • Desired Skills
    • Preferred Qualification
    • Benefits
    • Own skills vs job ad
    • Dealing with poorly written job ads
  • Resume writing
    • Templates
    • Building a draft
    • Resume in Detail
    • Understand the company
    • ATS and tailoring
    • Last Step
  • Cover letter
    • Writing a cover letter
  • Preparation & Interview
    • Organize your job hunt
    • SWOT Again (interview)
    • Twitter
    • The interview
    • Interview Questions Designed To Trick You
    • Post interview tasks
  • I did it all, but...
    • You are not alone
    • Try Something New
    • Why You'll Fail in Cyber Security
  • Yes, I got a job!
    • Two, or more offers?
    • Continued learning
    • Moving up
    • Lessons learned
  • Conclusion
  • Additional things
    • Reviews (labs, courses, certs) >
      • CompTIA A+
      • CompTIA Network+
      • CompTIA Security+
      • CompTIA Server+
      • CompTIA PenTest+
      • DroneSec DSOC
      • Defensive-Security Purple Labs
      • FAA Part 107
      • INE eCPPT & PTP
      • Letsdefend review
      • Microsoft AZ-500
      • RangeForce SOC 1
      • RangeForce SOC 2
    • Work In A Different Country >
      • The Work Permit
      • Working in the US
      • Studying in the US
      • Studying in Germany
      • Work in a different country
    • Other Resources >
      • Useful Links >
        • All about careers
        • Red resources
        • Blue resources
      • YouTube
      • Twitch
      • Podcasts
      • Books
      • Udemy
      • Thanks
    • Contributors
  • Stefan Waldvogel, where can I help?
  • Home
  • Introduction
    • Things you should know
    • The strategy
  • Paths into Cybersecurity
    • First steps
    • SWOT Analysis
    • How much time do you need?
    • Calculate& Evaluate Knowledge
    • Imposter syndrome
    • Time Management
    • Cybersecurity Domains
    • Cloud Security
    • Financial advice >
      • Credit score
    • The salary
    • Advocacy for underrepresented groups
  • Goal Setting & Career paths
    • Find your career in 5 steps
    • Cybersecurity career options
    • Career finding with LinkedIn
    • Transferable Skills (general)
    • Transferable IT Skills
    • Find a path with job descriptions
    • The I do not know path
    • Do you know “garbage” jobs?
    • “Bonus” knowledge
    • Learning & Motivation
    • Particular vs. any job
    • Pentester path (start)
    • Pen Testing as Career
    • SOC Analyst as career
    • Security Engineer as career
    • Compliance & Risk as career
    • How to find a career (IAM Engineer)
    • Find a company
  • Networking
    • Networking like a pro
    • LinkedIn
    • Referrals & Skills
    • LinkedIn Recruiters >
      • Working with a recruiter
    • Cyber Community
    • Networking University
    • Mentoring
    • Build your personal brand
    • Goal of Networking
  • Hands-on
    • The home lab >
      • Designing a home lab
      • Ways to create a home lab
      • Hypervisors >
        • VirtualBox
        • VMWare Player
        • QEMU/KVM
      • Docker
      • Operating Systems >
        • Kali Linux >
          • Installing Kali with VirtualBox
        • Parrot
        • BlackArch
        • Red Hat Enterprise Linux >
          • RHCSA
        • Security Onion >
          • Installation Security Onion
        • Metasploitable2
        • Ubuntu
        • Windows >
          • Windows in a VM
          • Windows with Virtual Machine Manager
          • Preparing Windows logging
          • John Strand's ADHD VM
      • Firewalls >
        • pfSense Installation
        • pfSense configuration for Security Onion
    • Volunteer Work
    • Note Taking
    • Red labs >
      • Cyberseclabs
      • HackTheBox >
        • HackTheBox Academy
      • INE red side
      • RangeForce
      • Offensive Security
      • TryHackMe
      • Virtual Hacking Labs
    • Red tools & techniques >
      • Atomic Red Team
      • DVWA
      • Metasploit
      • OSINT tools
      • OWASP Juice Shop
    • Blue labs >
      • Blue Team Labs Online
      • DetectionLab (free)
      • INE
      • Letsdefend >
        • LetsDefend password stealer
      • Opensecuritytraining (free)
      • PurpleLabs
      • RangeForce
    • Blue tools >
      • Install a Canary Token
      • CyberChef
      • EDR Lima Charlie installation
      • EDR LimaCharlie configuration
      • EDR Velociraptor (free)
      • EDR Bluespawn (free)
      • DeepBlueCLI (logs Powershell, free)
      • Raccine (ransomware protection, free)
      • Install RITA (detects C2 traffic, free)
      • Sandboxes >
        • Joe's Sandbox
      • SIEM ELK Stack
      • SIEM Graylog >
        • Getting started with Graylog
        • Install Graylog
        • Graylog Windows agent
        • Graylog Linux agent
        • Graylog as application
      • Suricata with RangeForce
      • Identifying IoCs with RangeForce
      • What2Log
  • Certifications, Degree & Courses
    • Overview
    • Free & Affordable Resources
    • Pick your cert
    • Skill Assessment
    • Get a cheap degree
  • (Employment) fraud & scams
    • Suspicious Offer
    • Second Offer
    • Certification Scams
    • Fraud with courses
  • Analyzing a job ad
    • The Header
    • Building a Bridge
    • The Responsibilities
    • Desired Skills
    • Preferred Qualification
    • Benefits
    • Own skills vs job ad
    • Dealing with poorly written job ads
  • Resume writing
    • Templates
    • Building a draft
    • Resume in Detail
    • Understand the company
    • ATS and tailoring
    • Last Step
  • Cover letter
    • Writing a cover letter
  • Preparation & Interview
    • Organize your job hunt
    • SWOT Again (interview)
    • Twitter
    • The interview
    • Interview Questions Designed To Trick You
    • Post interview tasks
  • I did it all, but...
    • You are not alone
    • Try Something New
    • Why You'll Fail in Cyber Security
  • Yes, I got a job!
    • Two, or more offers?
    • Continued learning
    • Moving up
    • Lessons learned
  • Conclusion
  • Additional things
    • Reviews (labs, courses, certs) >
      • CompTIA A+
      • CompTIA Network+
      • CompTIA Security+
      • CompTIA Server+
      • CompTIA PenTest+
      • DroneSec DSOC
      • Defensive-Security Purple Labs
      • FAA Part 107
      • INE eCPPT & PTP
      • Letsdefend review
      • Microsoft AZ-500
      • RangeForce SOC 1
      • RangeForce SOC 2
    • Work In A Different Country >
      • The Work Permit
      • Working in the US
      • Studying in the US
      • Studying in Germany
      • Work in a different country
    • Other Resources >
      • Useful Links >
        • All about careers
        • Red resources
        • Blue resources
      • YouTube
      • Twitch
      • Podcasts
      • Books
      • Udemy
      • Thanks
    • Contributors
  • Stefan Waldvogel, where can I help?
  CYBERSECURITY JOB HUNTING GUIDE

pfsense installation

Author: Stefan Waldvogel

How to install pfSense with VMM

Overview
pfSense is a open-source firewall. If we want to build a lab at home, we should use static IP addresses and our lab should look realistic. pfSense is full solution with DHCP, DNS and much more. Remember, we build a lab to gain realistic hands-on. 
In a real world, one of the first devices is a firewall because we want to protect out home network.

I am doing this lab with Virtual Machine Manager. Virtual Machine Manager is a free hypervisor for Linux and more powerful than others. You can use VirtualBox, VMWare player, HyperV or other software. The main goal is, you get the idea and you should be able to transfer the knowledge into new tools. The software will change, if you get stuck, read the official guide or watch some matching YouTube videos.

Download link:
www.pfsense.org/download/

Select the architecture (AMD64), the installer (DVD Image) and download the image. The iso is about 360 MB and it will take some minutes.

Preparing the network
During the download time, we have to think about our network. A firewall/router separates two different networks. If you use a pfSense with a hypervisor (VMWare, VirtualBox, ect) one network is pre-configured, but we need a second one for our internal network.

Our first network could look like this:
Picture
Picture
source: ​https://agussas.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/vmware-networking-concept-bridged-nat-host-only-lan-segment/
Networks:
default -> with network we connect everything to the internet. The default network offers internet capability and DHCP. This means, if you plug in a new device, this device will get an IP and it works without additional work. Usually, it is configured as NAT (Network Address Translation). 
internal network -> we have to create this new network and we have to switch off all the nice features. We just want the "cables" but without intelligence. 
Components:
pfSense -> we need at least two Ethernet cards because we have at least two subnets. Incoming and the internal. pfSense is a "smart" device (if we want) and we can reserve IP addresses, route traffic and much more.  
Virtual machines -> I will use static IPs and i will switch off DHCP. The reason is, if we add complex tools like a SIEM or EDR, a static IP is easier to handle. 
Host PC -> this is our big machine with internet access.

Setting up the networks
For this task, I use Virtual Machine Manager (QEMU/KVM), but you can do similar steps with most hypervisors.
Picture
This is the standard setting (on this hypervisor). We can see our network and IP range and NAT is activated. We have to add a new network:
Picture
Picture
We add the following things:
Name: internal -> if you use VMWare, you cannpot change the name, it does not matter
Mode: I use isolated, because this network does not connect to something. I want the wires, nothing else.
IPv4: I add the wanted IP range and disable DHCP. 

Now, we have two networks and can move on to the installation of pfSense.

Unpacking the file
After the download, we need to unpack the file. On a Linux the command is:
gunzip pfSense-{your version number}-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gz
If you use Windows, you can use 7-Zip to unpack the file.

If you want,  you can move the iso to a new location.

Preparing the hypervisor
First, we have to know the hardware requirements. pfSense is based on BSDLinux and does not need much:
  • 1 core
  • 512MB or highr
  • 4 GB HDD
  • 2 network cards

​Now, we can create a new VM:
Picture
Picture
We have to pick the OS and the hardware.
Picture
Picture
Here, I created a new custom storage with 5 GB on a different path, but you can use the standard path. 
Picture
Picture
We check all the settings, but we see only one network adapter. Click finish and stop the VM. Click the light bulb and add a network card.
Picture
Picture
Connect it to our isolated network and you should see two network cards.
Picture
Picture
Now, we can power on the machine. If you get an error with "no bootable disk" add the iso to your CDROM. Add the CD drive as boot device.
Picture
Picture
Follow the offical guide to install pfSense:
​https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/install/install-walkthrough.html

At the end, you should see something like this:
Picture
pfSense is running. We have two networks WAN and LAN and both match our wanted setting.

The next step is to configure pfSense via a GUI. The problem is, the GUI is not accessible via the WAN port. 
First, we need a VM in the internal network. If you have a VM, switch the network to "internal" and restart the machine. I prepared a Kali Linux.
Picture
If you do not have a virtual machine, here is a small guide:
Kali Linux with VirtualBox
Configure and start your virtual machine. It can be anything with a browser. Access the pfSense configuration page with the LAN address. In my case it is:
192.168.1.1
Type your LAN address into your browser and you see the following screen.
Picture
Follow this guide to set it up: docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/config/setup-wizard.html
If everything works, your virtual machine has internet access.

pfSense is massive! Just open some menus and get a feeling for the program. Later we have to change some settings, because for Security Onion, we need one more Ethernet card and we need to set up port mirroring.
Next: pfSense configuration for Security Onion
© 2021. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license​