Commando VM — Turns Your Windows OS Into A Hacking Machine

FireEye today released Commando VM, which according to the
company, is a first of its kind Windows-based security distribution
for penetration testing and red teaming.

When it comes to the best-operating systems for hackers, Kali
Linux is always the first choice for penetration testers and
ethical hackers.

However, Kali is a Linux-based distribution, and using Linux
without learning some basics is not everyone’s cup of tea as like
Windows or macOS operating systems.

Moreover, if you are wondering why there is no popular
Windows-based operating system for hackers? First, because Windows
is not open-source and second, manually installing penetration
testing tools on Windows is pretty problematic for most
users.

To help researchers and cyber security enthusiasts, cybersecurity
firm FireEye today released^[1] an automated
installer called Commando VM.

But don’t get confused with its name. Commando VM is not a
pre-configured snapshot of a virtual machine image with many tools
installed on a Windows system.

Instead, it’s an automated tool, a collection of scripts, that
can turn your Windows operating system, running on a virtual
machine (VM) or even on the base system, into a hacking
machine.

Moreover, I have to mention that Commando VM is not the first of
its kind.

Available since 2015, PentestBox^[2]
is a similar open-source tool, running which automatically installs
all the security tools as a software package directly on your
Windows computer.

Developed by Indian security researcher Aditya Agrawal,
PentestBox has been designed to eliminate the requirement of
virtual machines or dual boot environments on Windows.

Commando VM release 1.0 includes two different set-ups, one
works on Windows 7 and another for users running Windows 10
operating system.

Commando VM offers a smooth working environment by automatically
installing more than 140 tools, including Nmap, Wireshark, Remote
Server Administration Tools, Mimikatz, Burp-Suite, x64db,
Metasploit, PowerSploit, Hashcat, and Owasp ZAP, on your Windows
machine.

According to one of the authors^[3] of Commando VMs, the
following are the top three features of the tool that make it more
interesting:

• Native Windows protocol support (SMB, PowerShell, RSAT,
  Sysinternals, etc.)
• Organized toolsets (Tools folder on the desktop with Info
  Gathering, Exploitation, Password Attacks, etc.)
• Windows-based C2 frameworks like Covenant (dotnet) and PoshC2
  (PowerShell)

According to FireEye, Commando VM also uses Boxstarter, Chocolatey,
and MyGet packages to install all software packages. Running a
single command will automatically update all your installed hacking
software.
To use this on your Windows computer, you need at least 60 GB of
free hard drive space, 2GB of RAM and a freshly installed Windows
OS on a virtual machine software, like VMware or Oracle VirtualBox
installed on your system.

Installing Commando VM is pretty easy. Just download the Commando
VM^[4], decompress it and then
execute the PowerShell script available in the package on your
VM-based Windows to complete the installation.

The remaining installation process will be done automatically,
which may take between 2 to 3 hours to finish depending upon your
Internet speed.

After the completion of the installation process, you’ll be
presented with Commando VM, and all you need to do is reboot your
machine to ensure the final configuration changes take
effect.