Basic setup of Nepenthes inside of VmWare Workstation with Ubuntu

I recently installed Nepenthes inside of a Ubuntu VM. This software is used for collecting malware and malicious  code. The basic setup is as follows:

Step 1:
Create the VM using VMware Workstation or ESX/ESXi. There is various wizards for what hardware to use, just accept the defaults for now.

Step 2:
Install Ubuntu. The standard installation with the automatic formatting of the partitions will do. Nothing really special here. Below are some screenshots of my install process:

The Ubuntu install is loading = YAY

Typical language dialog

 Followed by the standard Time Zone one.

 With the typical keyboard layout chooser

 Behold we are using the whole hard drive. No surprise there, as it is a virtual one :D.

 Lets create our usernames

 Make sure the password is something that can be remembered. As it is a pain to reset it.

Get it to log in automatically. As it's no fun typing the password all the time.

Yipee Time to install

Yes, we want a bootloader - these are the default settings

Now we click install to make it all work.

Time to get a coffee

Some Tea

Lets reboot to make this work and enjoy our hard work.

Thats the standard install. Time to install this mystical Nepenthes. It's pretty easy. There is a few steps.

Step 1:
Update the system. We don't want anything getting through to the bas system, as if it does we are in real trouble. Use system update to install the updates.
Step 2:
Install Nepenthes.

Step 2 pictures:

 We type the nice password that we entered during the install.

 Ya, more fancy bars to tell us that it's doing something.

Sure lets not install GRUB 2. As it complicates our lives.

What more clicking. Jeez, I thought this was supposed to be easy.











Well, now that the updates are installed. Lets do what we installed this VM for - setting up Nepenthes. Simply open a nice terminal and type 'sudo apt-get install nepenthes'. It'll find nepenthes form the mirrors and we are ready to click yes to install.

Time for some more pictures:

Well, after that we can edit the nice configuration file /etc/nepenthes.conf. This stores how the program operates. For more information on it, run a man on nepenthes: man nepenthes. It'll explain everything that is needed for setting it up and how it collects the data.

After all this is done. All that remains for setup is:
-Add another vmware network adapter as bridged/nat. This will act as the method that the nepenthes install is going to connect to the internet.
-Now we setup a DMZ to the EXACT IP address of the Virtual machine. To find this out we use ifconfig to determine what the IP for the VM. As seen below:

My virtual adapter being the eth0 in this case.

- After that is done. If you are like me and have two virtual network adapters - DISBALE the Host-only one. As if u are running multiple VMs on host-only, with the honeypot running, it could be a potential security risk.

Well, until next time. Seeya folks.