Instructions for configuring Oracle VirtualBox in the computer class
In case you will use the virtual machine at home, you can still follow the instructions but they have to be slightly modified. For example, when using your own computer you will have to select which folder the virtual machine should be unpacked to. The virtual machine file is about 22GB and it will take around the same amount of disk space to unpack the machine. Thus, you will need about 45GB of free disk space to run the virtual machine in your own computer. In case you do not have sufficient disk space, it may be easier to manually install the required software (VeraCrypt is the most important part of this lab).
- Open Oracle VirtualBox from the desktop or start menu.
- Lets configure the folder where the virtual machine will be unpacked. For that, find the file menu from the top left corner of VirtualBox window. Navigate to: File -> Preferences -> General -> Default Machine Folder. Click on the yellow folder icon named "Other...".
- Now, depending on the lab navigate to drive D (in room 2004 and 2006) or drive C (in room 2030 and 2029) and open folder named infsec2023 (the illustration is from last year). Next click "Choose". You should now have the following view (see image below). After confirming it, click OK.
- Next, lets import the virtual machine. Click on the import button or select from the menu: File -> Import Appliance.
- Click on the yellow icon that is located on the right side of the window.
- Navigate to the folder D:\infsec2023 or C:\infsec2023 and select the file infsec-win10-2023_fall.ova (screenshot is from last year). Click Open and Next.
- Click Import and wait until the machine is being imported.
- It will take a few minutes before the virtual machine gets imported. Read the following instructions in the meantime.
- Once the importing finishes, you will see a new entry in the left panel of the VirtualBox window. Click on that entry and press the green Start button.
- The system drive of the virtual machine is encrypted. Thus, it will first ask a password before it even starts to load the operating system. The password will be used to unlock the decryption key, which will be used to decrypt the contents of the virtual hard drive. The password for the virtual machine is given to you in the lab but it is also posted to the Moodle forum. Enter the password and press enter twice (the PIM field is supposed to stay empty).
- It will take some time to check the password. This is done on purpose to make it more difficult to guess the password by brute forcing different combinations.
- After a while Windows will start to load in case you entered the password correctly. There is no password set for the user account and thus you will be automatically logged in. Thus, you should be able to see the desktop on a virtual Windows machine.
- Put the virtual machine window to full screen mode in order to not confuse between the real operating system and the virtual environment. To do that go to View menu and select full screen mode. You can also close the information bars that are displayed on the top of the screen. Now we are ready to start solving the lab tasks.