Kali Linux is a Debian based operating system that is used for penetration testing and ethical hacking. Installing Kali Linux on a virtual machine is a better way of staying secure and performing your penetration testing work. There are various tools that come with Kali Linux which you can use like gather information of a target, search for vulnerabilities within a system, attacking a target system and so on. Other than the preinstalled tools there are various open source tools that are also available on GitHub that you can use for the purpose of penetration testing.
In this article, I will show you how you can install Kali Linux on a virtual machine. Virtual machines basically allow us to create a virtual environment and install various different operating systems on top of our main operating system. There are various software’s that allows us to create virtual machines but for this tutorial, we will be using the virtual box because it is free and open source software.
Requirements:
There are 2 things which you will need before you get started with the installation process. The first things are the Kali Linux image (here we will be downloading an ISO image) which can be downloaded from the official website of kali. And secondly, we have to download the virtual box.
- Kali Linux (ISO Image)
- Virtual Box
You can download either 32-bit or 64-bit versions for both of the above software depending upon the operating system you use.
Note: If you don’t know which version of windows you are running then you can “right-click” on My PC and select “properties” and check.
Virtual Machine configuration:
Before installing Kali Linux on a virtual machine, firstly you have to install and configure the virtual box on your computer. It’s really simple you just have to click next and install.
After you have installed virtual box you have to open it and click on “new” to create a new virtual machine. A new window will pop up where you have to enter the name of the virtual machine, choose a location where you want to store it and select the version as follows and then click “Next”.
Now provide the size of RAM for the virtual machine. I will be allotting 5GB of RAM. The more the size of RAM the better performance you will get.
After that select “create a virtual hard disk now” and click “create”.
Then choose “VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image)” and click on next.
Now for storage on physical hard disk choose “dynamically allocated”.
Here, you have to select storage size for your virtual machine. You can put any size depending upon your hard disk space. And then create the virtual machine.
Now the virtual machine has been created but before running the virtual machine you have to do two things first is to add the Kali Linux iso image which we have downloaded and secondly change the network setting. For that right-click on our machine and go to “settings”.
Here you have to select the “Storage” options at the left-hand side and delete the empty disk as follows.
Then click on the (+) blue disk icon beside the controller IDE and click on “choose disk” and add the Kali Linux iso image here.
Secondly, you have to select the “network” option and change the Attached to “NAT” to “Bridged Adapter”. This will allow us to share our internet on our main machine with the virtual machine by bridging the network.
Now we are ready to run our virtual machine by clicking on the “start” button at the top.
Steps for installing Kali Linux on a virtual machine:
Now its time to install Kali Linux on a virtual machine. After you start the virtual machine you will first see a screen where there will be multiple options out of which you have to select “Graphical Install” which will install Kali Linux with GUI.
It will ask you to select the language, the country and then keyboard so choose “English” as the language, country where you live in and American English as the keyboard and click on continue.
Now it will ask you to choose the hostname for your computer. You can choose whatever name you want to but I will keep the default name “Kali” as it is.
Then it will ask you to put a domain name i.e your website name. So, if you have a website then you can put your website name here or just leave it blank.
Now it will ask you to enter a password for the root user. So, you have to make sure that you choose a strong password and to remember it because it will be required later to login into the system. Here, I have chosen “123” as my password just for tutorial purposes but in practice, you have to choose a strong password.
On the next screen, you have to select “Guided-use entire disk” and click on continue. If you want to create a manual partition then you can choose “manual”.
Then you have to select a hard disk and then all files in one partition and click and continue. Finally, it will ask you to write changes to the disk so select “Finish partitioning and write changes to the disk” and click on continue.
Now confirm the partition and write changes to the disk by choosing “yes”.
Then for the use of the network mirror select “yes”.
Then it will ask you to enter HTTP proxy so just ignore this and click continue. After that, it will ask you to install the GRUB so select “yes” and continue.
And then on the next screen, it will ask you to select the hard disk so select the “/dev/sda” option and continue.
Now the installation of the Kali Linux on a virtual machine has been successfully completed.
After the setup has completed it will restart the system and then you can log in with your credentials.
Username: root
Password: chosen password.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed and logged in to your Kali Linux virtual machine.
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