this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Hello!

I'm working as a pentester/RT Operator in a cybersecurity company, which for some reason is a Windows shop, so we are mostly forced to work within VMWare VMs, WSL and similar. However, I've recently found out that we can in fact dualboot or reinstall our laptops, so I'm now looking for a good setup or recommended distros to use.

When I last tried switching to Fedora, my main issue was that since we are deeply integrated into O365, and our Exchange server isn't configured to allow 3rd party apps (and we can't create app passwords), accessing Teams, Mail or just writing reports in Office was a struggle. And another issue was the fact that our PT VPN is Checkpoint, which I did not manage to get working on Linux.

I'm of course familiar with Kali/Parrot/BlackArch, but I would not consider those fitting for a daily driver - each engagement can get pretty messy, and I think it's better to start with a fresh VM for every customer, just to avoid any potential issues.

I've recently discovered QubeOS, which in theory sounds like it should be perfect for this usecase - you can easily separate data for different customers, keep them safe in a storage qube, deal with per-customer networking/different VPNs in their respective Kali VM qubes, and spin up a Windows qube for report writing and backoffice/administration/communication. And if I really understand it correctly, it should also be possible to easily test out malware in a separate disposable qube without much risk.

But I didn't try working with QubeOS yet, so all of this is just a theory based on my understanding of it's features and usecases.

So, my question would be - what kind of setup do you use for engagements and backoffice/administrative work? What distro would you recommend, that works well with running different VMs without it being too much of a hassle? And most importantly, is there anyone who uses QubeOS in this field of work, or will it only slow me down and make everything a lot harder than it should be?

Thank you!

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you, that sounds like exactly what I imagined QubeOS would be good for, so I'll give it a go.

Stop that. :) Your system should be using FDE (which VeraCrypt can do if you’re stuck with Windows).

I'm using Bitlocker for the whole drive, but the main point of separate volume is for it to have adittional password protection, that I auto dismount when not working with it, just in case my laptop got compromised. I'm still mostly figuring out best practices, since I don't work in the field for that long, and few months ago I was running Snaffler on my PC to test it out for one engagement, and was horrified when I realized how much did it manage to find, so I at least promptly moved it to separate password protected volume, and am now figuring out a better secrets and sensitive data management workflow.