ThreatBox – A Standard And Controlled Linux Based Attack Platform

ThreatBox is a standard and controlled Linux based attack platform. I’ve used a version of this for years. It started as a collection of scripts, lived as a rolling virtual machine, existed as code to build a Linux ISO, and has now been converted to a set of ansible playbooks. Why Ansible? Why not? This seemed to be the next natural evolution to the configuration of standard attack platforms.

This project uses ansible playbooks and roles to perform post deployment configuration on a linux target (Tested on Ubuntu 18.04).

The project is designed to be used as a starter process in creating, managing, and using a standard attack platform for red teaming or penetration testing.

Detail on the concept of a Standard Attack Platform can be found it the book Red Team Development and Operations – A practical guide, written by Joe Vest and James Tubberville. 

Features

• Standard tools defined as ansible roles
• Customizations designed to make security testing easier
• Variable list to add or remove git repositories, OS packages, or python modules. (threatbox.yml)
• Version tracking of the deployed instance version and the deploy tool version. This is helpful it meeting compliance rules and can help minimize fear by actively tracking all tools.
  • Threatbox version created at deployment and displayed in desktop wallpaper
  • Deployed software tracked in ~/Desktop/readme
• SSH port auto-switching. The deployment starts on port 22, but reconfigures the target system to the desired SSH port using the ansible_port variable in threatbox.yml
• Download and compile several .net toolkits (i.e. SeatBelt.exe from Ghostpack https://github.com/GhostPack/Seatbelt)
• Most python projects installed using pipenv. Use pipenv shell in the project directory to access. See https://realpython.com/pipenv-guide/ for pipenv usage guidance

Project Files

The following list highlights key components of this project.

Quickstart

Provision

Provision one or more targets.

Note: This project was tested on Ubuntu 18.04 deployed in Digitalocean

Configuration

1. Copy hosts.sample to hosts
2. Edit hosts with the IP(s) of your target systems
3. Copy group_varsthreatbox.yml.sample to group_varsthreatbox.yml
4. Edit group_varsthreatbox.yml with the updated variables you would like to use
   • Don’t forget to update SSH key with a key that has access to the remote target

Ansible commands

# OSX issue https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/32499
if [[ "$(uname)" == "Darwin" ]]
then
    export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=yes;
fi

# Ansible Logging
rm ./ansible.log
export ANSIBLE_LOG_PATH="ansible.log"

# Ansible Debugging
export ANSIBLE_DEBUG=False

# Execute playbook
ansible-playbook -e ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3 -i hosts threatbox_playbook.yml 

Note: Consider using Mitogen for Ansible to gain a significant performance boost. https://mitogen.networkgenomics.com/ansible_detailed.html

Tested with this ansible.cfg

[defaults]
host_key_checking = False
pipelining = True
forks = 100
timeout = 600
stdout_callback = yaml
bin_ansible_callbacks = True
callback_whitelist = profile_roles, profile_tasks, timer

#mitogen
strategy_plugins = ~/Documents/mitogen-0.2.9/ansible_mitogen/plugins/strategy
strategy = mitogen_linear

Remotely Access the system

Console access with SSH

Note: SSH may be set to a non-standard port during setup. This value is set in the group_vars/threatbox.yml files

threatboxip=10.10.10.10
sshport=52222
ssh -p $sshport -i ~/.ssh/threatbox_id_rsa root@$threatboxip

GUI Access with VNC over SSH

Note: VNC is setup but not allowed over the network. You must use an SSH tunnel to access.

threatboxip=10.10.10.10
sshport=52222
ssh -p $sshport -i ~/.ssh/threatbox_id_rsa -L 5901:localhost:5901 root@$threatboxip

Notes on the project

This project uses ansbile roles. These roles may not exactly follow the ansible style. They were designed to be used as part of this project and use a single ‘variable’ file to control the project. The roles can easily be used in other project with minor tweaks.

Features

ThreatBox Custom Commands

Tool Categories

Tracking of all installed tools

Automatic terminal logging

Custom terminal options provide more context

Light version of the terminal 

Pipenv keep Python projects independent

Example of SilentTrinity running in pipenv environment

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