Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

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Mitch
Posts: 5
Joined: 11. Apr 2019, 04:13

Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by Mitch »

Hi Folks - I'm taking a class on network security and we're building a bunch of VM's to run Kali Linux, Metasploitable 2/3, etc. My laptop is kind of underpowered and I'm low on space. So I lit up a Windows 10 client on the Amazon Workspace solution. Pretty cool, basically free account and some decent performance. I'm full local admin on the account and was able to install Virtualbox without a problem and the extensions. I downloaded Kali OVA and imported it into Virtualbox. Every time I try to launch the virtual machine, I get disconnected from the Windows 10 Amazon workspace and it becomes unstable. I'm wondering if there is some network initialization or something that is occurring that is booting me off. I did see some errors around hardware virtualization needing to be turned off and adjusted the RAM down on the Kali VM. Still same results. Don't know if anyone has any thoughts on how I could get the virtuals running on this platform without it booting me out every time. Like I said, everything else seems to be working fine (loaded Chrome, downloaded multiple OVA's, etc).

Thanks - Mitch

Update - So based upon the virtualization hardware settings, I was unable to disable hardware virtualization for 64bit Kali. So I downloaded the OVA for 32bit and imported that. Ensured that hardware virtualization was turned off and tried starting the VM. Same behavior. Pretty much disconnected me from my Amazon Windows 10 workspace session.
socratis
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Location: Greece

Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by socratis »

I would start by aski Amazon Workspaces. The "network disconnect" maybe that Win10 is crashing?
Mitch wrote:Amazon Workspace solution. Pretty cool, basically free account and some decent performance.
Can we test drive it as well? Does it need an arm and a leg and a kidney "donation" to get in? ;)
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Mitch
Posts: 5
Joined: 11. Apr 2019, 04:13

Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by Mitch »

I will see if I can get some support, but I'm trying to use the free tier of Amazon Web Services to do this. The Windows 10 instance I chose was in the free tier, but I might upgrade it to something more powerful to try to work through this with their tech support team. I was also considering just tearing down this workspace and building a fresh one. If you sign up for an account with AWS you should be able to see all services that are in the free tier by selecting the various services - EC2, Workspaces, etc.
socratis
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Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by socratis »

Can you run any other VM? Like a DOS VM? No need to provide a bootable medium or anything like that, just let it fail with the "No bootable medium found" error. Then close the VM, right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log". Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
Mitch
Posts: 5
Joined: 11. Apr 2019, 04:13

Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by Mitch »

Socratis - So Amazon Tech Support responded. It looks like they have disabled the ability to nest virtualization solutions on top of an already virtualized host systems that is provided in Workspaces. They recommended that it would probably work by building a bare metal Windows deployment under the EC2 platform. I haven't tried it yet, but will. In the meantime I was able to free up some space on my Windows laptop and get the VM's loaded that I needed for the class.

Thanks! Mitch
Mitch
Posts: 5
Joined: 11. Apr 2019, 04:13

Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by Mitch »

Socratis - Another question for you and I'm going to display my utter lack of knowledge around networking. I've setup 4 virtual machines within Virtualbox on my Windows 10 host machine. There is a Kali Linux machine and 3 Metasploitable instances (Ubuntu - 2) and Windows. I would like to allow the Kali Linux machine to be able to access the internet via the host machine but also connect to a 2nd network within Virtualbox that the other three machines will live on with it. I don't want to allow those other Metasploitable machines to be connected to the internet via the host. I've been banging my head against the wall trying to get a 2nd adapter setup (which I enabled) for Kali linux but can only get one adapter active at a time on Kali. I believe ideally, the 2nd adapter on Kali and the primary on the Metasploitable machines would have the same subnet so I can run network security tools in a protected way against the Metasploitable boxes. Can you point me to a tutorial that might help me get this configured? I've also tried setup a internal network for adapter 2, but still wasn't able to activate the adapter nor get an IP address for it. Thanks! Mitch
socratis
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Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by socratis »

Mitch wrote: I've been banging my head against the wall trying to get a 2nd adapter setup (which I enabled) for Kali linux but can only get one adapter active at a time on Kali
Someone should yell at the Kali folks, this is beyond stupid! :evil:

From my notes:
/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=true                            <------- from managed=false
/etc/network/interfaces
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth3
iface eth3 inet dhcp
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
Mitch
Posts: 5
Joined: 11. Apr 2019, 04:13

Re: Amazon Workspaces - Windows 10 - Running Virtualbox

Post by Mitch »

Thank you, I will try to work through this. Best, Mitch
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