OTW and I get asked this question all the time: "What's the best laptop to buy for hacking?" In this video we answer that question and more. // Menu // 00:00 - Coming up 00:32 - Intro 00:38 - Sponsored Segment 01:41 - "The perfect laptop for hacking" 04:50 - Getting the right CPU 06:52 - The importance of RAM 07:49 - WiFi adapters for WiFi hacking 09:45 - "Gear doesn't matter" 12:57 - Virtual Machines for beginners 15:40 - What OS do I need? 16:23 - VM issues with M1 & M2 chips 19:27 - Kali bare-metal and Kali VM 22:10 - Which Linux is better? 23:30 - Dragon OS // New OS for SDR 24:19 - Know your Linux! 25:26 - Don't waste money on the greatest and latest tech 26:34 - Desktop vs Laptop 27:51 - Learn hacking on a phone 29:48 - The Raspberry Pi // Effective learning environment 32:23 - Linux can work on old computers 33:01 - Conclusion // Videos mentioned // Best hacking laptop (2021 edition) with Neal Bridges: ruclips.net/video/jsMp65-piIc/видео.html Kali Linux install on Raspberry Pi: ruclips.net/video/PqRVo2niA_8/видео.html Kali Linux install on Android (rootless): ruclips.net/video/KxOGyuGq0Ts/видео.html Kali Linux USB boot: ruclips.net/video/n2olKupv9fY/видео.html Kali Linux WSL install: ruclips.net/video/UXyS-xofGNM/видео.html Kali Linux WSL2 GUI Apps: ruclips.net/video/mp5DdgZP7ns/видео.html Kali Linux Windows install: ruclips.net/video/W6_nBr8SbPE/видео.html Kali Linux macOS: ruclips.net/video/fcrSmbUIHuo/видео.html // Mr Robot Playlist // ruclips.net/p/PLhfrWIlLOoKNYR8uvEXSAzDfKGAPIDB8q // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal RUclips: ruclips.net/user/davidbombal // Occupy The Web social // Twitter: twitter.com/three_cube // OTW Discount // Use the code BOMBAL to get a 20% discount off anything from OTW's website: davidbombal.wiki/otw // Occupy The Web books // Linux Basics for Hackers: amzn.to/3JlAQXe Getting Started Becoming a Master Hacker: amzn.to/3qCQbvh // Other books // The Linux Command Line: amzn.to/3ihGP3j How Linux Works: amzn.to/3qeCHoY The Car Hacker’s Handbook by Craig Smith: amzn.to/3pBESSM Hacking Connected Cars by Alissa Knight: amzn.to/3dDUZN8 Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel!
"Too ashamed to ask, too scared to ask or too embarrassed to ask or whatever", David you are a legend you are both legends, thank you both for everything you do!
@@davidbombal ok does that apply to all of us? Can I have 5 minutes of your time at some point to ask for some advice? My situation is quite unique and I have no doubt you'll be able to get quite a video out of it because I know I'm not the only one in said situation but given it's nature many are afraid of reaching out for advice on the subject.
Yes I agree, with this comment! Freaking Legend and amazing teacher!!! Thank you for all of the videos/ information. I haven't started yet but only because I'm not ready to yet. I downloaded a hacking app that teaches hacking that I have yet to try (ETHICAL HACKING UNIVERSITY). Again thank you for all of your time and information! I will be sure to watch all the way through for you to get the watch time on your videos, I also appreciate the Mr.Robot references, I haven't watched it yet only because I'm super busy lately and just getting back into the desire to learn this important skill! Thanks again and I will be sure to help you any way I can!
Yes you both absolutely are legends. However the reason why I love you both so much is the fact that your humble you're both very humble Legends Connor and that is the most important point of them all I do need help with something if you could just even direct me towards any methods videos you made or any tools Weatherby Windows Linux even Mac I don't have a Mac but I guess I could borrow one but preferably windows or Linux to crack the screen bypass the screen lock on an iPad 7 is the most imperative one right now. I've searched and I would rather learn how to do it properly rather than screw around with things like 10 of shareware they charge unit exorbitant amount of money for something I'm sure I can do it myself. And just FYI I'm still learning hacking cracking all that but I do know some osint tools as well as some other ones and I may not be anywhere near an advanced level hacker but I'm nowhere near I knew be; put it this I'd be
Bought a T560 for $200 and been using it for 2 years. My daily driver with my own custom tools. Thanks for the informative video. Looking for my dream laptop to be honest. Main reason why I clicked on your video. Stay safe.
I bought a Razer basic 2021 model last year for both gaming and teaching myself programming. Main reason I'm commenting is I bought the book "Linux basics for hackers" last summer. Great videos, keep up the good work!
Hi David, Thank you for getting such knowledgeable guests. I took some of your courses for obvious reasons. I enjoy your teaching methods, straight and to the point. Thanks again!
@@silentwater79 I have one but never got around to cloning my HDD to it. I've uninstalled 30 GB of Quake Champions as it didn't have enough space to update anyway.
I have an old HP ZBook (i7, 32 GB RAM) that is my go-to laptop for penetration testing and vulnerability analysis, even though it is a heavy old brick it is ideal for throwing in to a rucksack. The best thing about using an older style laptop over one that is "state of the art" is that is has enough USB inputs to attack WiFi dongles, external keyboards, mice etc. My best advice is if you are going mobile, buy one that you don't mind if it gets knocked or bumped.
For CPU, one thing you miss is core count. Speed is kind of irrelevant. Ram is great, but running multiple processes or VM's with a dual or quad core is going to start to impact performance the more you stretch it out.
My desktop has an x99 board with a zeon e5 2690 v4 that I got for $100 on aliexpress. My favorite hacking laptop (I have 4 moderately aged ones) is a $60 Chromebook that was built in 2015 and has a m.2 port. I hate chrome, but I love my old Chromebooks! 😂
Virtual Box recently announced that they're bringing Apple Silicon Mac support in the latest version. This was announced one week after this video was uploaded. Thank you David!
David am a medical doctor from Uganda 🇺🇬 I loved tech but I didn't have a chance up to now when I was introduced to alx software engineering bootcamp. My goal is to be a senior cyber security analyst. I found one of your videos but up to now am following your series and note down some small notes 📝. Am gaining alot and getting a guide of what the field of cyber security is. Thanks a lot David 🙏
i think that the best laptop for hacking needs: lot of usb ports, in case you need multiple external devices (note that a mouse is essential) minimum 16gb of ram for running multiple machines or running heavy programs like metasploit, burpsuite etc. If you are using a virtual machine, kali will need a lot more resources to run smoothly, compared to a bare metal installation. A cpu that have a good number of core/threads rather than speed, because in vm you will have to give to multiple machines at least 1/2 cores to run smooth the gpu is useless in my opinion I also suggest a laptop that have a good keyboard that feels good, because it can make difference and frustrate you if there are missing keys , defective shit after some time and more
Im thinking about getting a usb keyboard for my laptop. my typing speed is like 2-3x faster on a keyboard.. like 120 wpm.. i might be 60 on a laptop keyboard. Would this be laughable hahahaha
I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro with 10GB RAM and 256Gb SSD. Works flawlessy. I am yet to come across any tools that can't be installed either via brew, macport, or github. They all work fine.
I prefer the dell rugged systems. They can be had pretty cheap second hand from various educational or industrial sales. You can configure them with different cards. I have 2 wifi cards and a 4GLTE. The hard drives are in removable caddy for swapping. The batteries are hot swap. They have good port options like serial ports and multiple Ethernet jacks. They are more durable ect. They have great bios feature, for instance function keys for immediately turning off the antennas with one press and ghost modes.
Great segment! A big thing you need for running multiple VMs is disk space… get a big HDD or SSD to make sure you have enough space for the VM partitions. HomeBrew your intel based Mac and you’re set up for a lot of stuff. Definitely not everything that runs on Linux, but it helps ha ha. Keep up the amazing work!!!
I have a dell optiplex 790mt with 32gb of ram 3ssd’s and a HDD. I also have a Chromebook and a dell inspirion from 2010 or 2011, that I threw an SSD and 16gb of ddr3 ram into. That dell straight up cost me $50 all in and my desktop (primarily for gaming) was like $500 all in. Old PC’s are WAY more capable than people realize.
I’m also building a monster from an old XEON and a X99 board. That will be my “hacking” desktop. I’ll even throw my old rx550 gpu in there to use both of my tvs as monitors.
I use a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 in my home lab as all the the components are compatible with nearly all linux distros and its an incredibly versatile laptop
I like what he is saying about the computer requirements. I get asked the question "what is a good computer" and I always ask "What will you be doing with it" or some variant of that as it really comes down to the use case... you could spend thousands on high end hardware and still have a poor experience because you bought the wrong hardware for the job.
VPN doesn't work if you log into anything with a real email because the cookies and tokens still know who you are and what you are doing 🤷♂ Easiest way to have privacy is to use a new vm with tor-browser and don't use any real emails or logins on that vm. Also, as far as laptop DO NOT get apple M1 to many compatibility issues.
I took a Macbook from the company. I installed Kali OS instead of mOS. It works perfectly because I used the excellent hardware from the MacBook. In a word, everything flies. 😀🛸🛫
Hey David. I have an M1 macbook pro with 32gb ram. I have had no issues learning hacking on it. No issues running windows or linux and playing around in the Parallels environment. Virtual Box just released their arm addition for M1 Macs. Sure I am not advanced at all, but for the beginner stage I am in, it works pretty flawlessly.(Side not, I got this macbook pro not for hacking but for work. My job involves me creating Microsoft server and windows environments to run demos for client on certain types of software we sell. I love that it doesn't slow down at all and has plenty of power to breeze through the presentations, often only on battery, for 5+ hours of testing.) Great content as always. Would love to connect with you and pick you brain as a Cybersecurity student with ADHD that is obsessed with trying to absorb everything like a super power. Have a great day!
@@davidbombal Yes it gets noisy on heavy usage, once you're not on the MacOS, it heats up as well and gets noisy but when on bare metal it's a little bit better.
Same. I use a mac, it runs command line tools and burp very well, the interface doesn't make my nose bleed like every Linux DE does and if I need more, I spin VMs up (that I can snapshot and revert at will).
Yes, intel on Macs went too hot. In other words, I remember Mac OS managed the heat well in older OS versions, but with newest OS version, the heat lost the control. I think Apple lowered their priorities on the heat issue on older machines and it is still manageable. For low budget, I'd stay on Mac book or Mini because their battery is very good and stable but go on with Linux. It is working very well. If you have extra money like I do, I would jump to ARM M1 Mac book because the battery life is so great and much less heat. For now, I have both machines, Intel and ARM. I can do the stuff on both machines. Once things get matured on ARM, I can leave Intel out of it.
I got an old t440p on eBay for $120. I got 16gb of ram for it for another $20 or so, and an m.2 ssd for another $20 or so. It has a core i5 in it, which I may replace with an i7 later on, just to have 4 cores, but the little old i5 runs just fine.
Desktop for me, have never liked laptops, the only laptop I have is an old chromebook that now runs Linux Mint. I got massive works with my desktop(s) Kali is nice, but bloated, just run Debian and install what you want, X the bloat you don't want or need. Love your channel, thanks for the things you show and explain. Props.
I did my CS degree with a Thinkpad T420. I'd like to point out that some older machines limit the amount of RAM you can install. So it might be better to get a slightly newer machine and add more RAM later on.
I can’t tell you guys how much i enjoy this series. I‘m now 1 year into my apprenticeship as an IT support and infrastructure specialist and i‘m so into cybersecurity. But unfortunately even tho there are actually a lot of videos and articles on how to start or learn, having someone who i can be pretty sure is a reliable source and also always having things explained easy and up to date. I really love this keep on doing it and maybe well see each other at sum hackathon :) ❤
Older cheap laptop with upgradable ram, get an SSD, more ports the better, turns out older cheaper laptops are more feature rich than the newest bleeding edge. Worthwhile to find semi decent build quality, something that is reliable and upgradable is golden. Old business devices tend to be higher quality and more survivable compared to consumer junk. Basically avoid trash tier netbooks and chromebooks, you don’t need a gaming behemoth. A decent multi core with good ram goes rather far. Quality business machines tend to have plenty of parts or spares available, makes maintaining and repairs easier as well, and if it’s common, support is greater.
My setup as Mac lover and Pentester - I own a Mac Pro M2 and I am running Kali on VMware Fusion. But I use this only for training, CTFs, etc. So for day-to-day work I have a decent laptop with macOS, that I can use for various casual tasks, that requires multiple steps to set up on Linux. For real pentest purposes I always use bare Kali on a 5 year old laptop with Intel, and it works like charm.
I use a brand new Asus L210. It has a 11 inch display, is super light, and even though it only has 64G of storage it has an M2 slot. It cost only $160 and for another $40 you can add a 500G M2. Kali installs with no problem and believe it or not the built in wifi card will do monitor mode. I also have a Alfa card but the internal one will work with github drivers. I use my gaming pc for cracking hashes but besides that the inexpensive Asus does everything I need and fits in a very small sling bag. Amazon still has them in stock though I see they are up to $168 now.
I've used Linux on my phones for years with Termux. Year by year I find it more useful and an essential part of everything I do with laptops, desktops or servers. Especially on the road. For hacking, having Termux or Kali on the phone is "invisible". You can go anywhere and just sit down and tap away, and everyone is just like "dude, he's gotta have a lot of followers!" :-D
The choice of a laptop is only important insofar as "Can it run the system I want?" which can be an important question. As you guys said, start with whatever you can. But, when you can afford to upgrade, my recommendation would be to get a laptop that is able to run Qubes OS. It's not *exactly* an OS really, I mean it is, but not a traditional one. It's a Type 1 Hypervisor and is absolutely perfect for compartmentalization. It's perfect for security use to keep yourself safe while at the same time, you can set up any number of VMs that you want for various purposes. You could have a Qube set up for your personal stuff separate from everything else in its own virtual environment, then have another set up to run Dragon OS in its own isolated Qube that you use just for SDR stuff, and yet another set up for Kali to be your main pentest system and more Qubes set up to be various test targets and so on. It's why I got a laptop with 64 gigs of RAM, I can run a good number of my Qubes at once.
@@ignaciofuentes7755 The laptop that I got for running Qubes? I got the Tuxedo Pulse 15 with 64 gigs of RAM and a 2 TB nvme SSD and a Ryzen 4800H CPU. Pretty sure there are better laptops now, but this one works wonders for me.
@@DarkGloComics You might want to remove this comment and ask your question as a comment on the video rather than as a reply to my comment, because this question was clearly not directed at me since I am all for people scrubbing themselves from such intel-gathering sources by using systems like Qubes OS and services like VPNs and incogni and such. Privacy is a right I will never help anyone to violate.
@@DarkGloComics take a chill pill mate. All I did was offer you a suggestion for how to get an answer and explain my personal reason for refusing to answer. Digital hygiene is important for personal safety and has nothing to do with politics. If you're seeing politics everywhere, consider taking a vacation or maybe getting a massage. 😛
I discuss the issues I have found with M1 and M2 in this video. I love the M1/M2s but there are problems with virtualization of x86/x64 VMs unfortunately. I don't find that UTM works that well for emulation. What has your experience been?
@@davidbombal ok I have to admit, I didn't see the whole video when I've replied... I will detail my answer after watching the whole video! Back in 10 minutes!
Ok here I am, the first important thing to say is: when it comes to virtualization UTM is great, everything works fine with the aarch64 version of Kali (or Debian, or Arch, you name it), but when it come to emulation it's a real disaster! I was referring to ARM Linux only, and it's great with Apple Silicon, you can take advantage of all the M1's amazing features, such as 15 hours of battery life, retina display, hdpi fonts and so on.
This is similar to my experience of the M1/M2. Virtualization of ARM is good, but not emulation of x86/x64. I prefer Parallels to UTM and that is what the Kali developers recommend (but it is a paid product).
I use a t480 bought for 320 euro in germany plus 32 gb ram ddr4 2400 mhz for 40 euro on a local deal t480s are the first lineup where even the lowest i5 is a quadcore and the laptop is the last one to support this power bridge thingy its also quite slim too, i love it.
Hi David, i'm glad you highlight the main issues with apple m1 silicon macs with vms but you said it right.Yeah UTM too. That is what i've been wondering all along the transitioning to apple silicon macs will be a big problems with pentesters if they are dealing with pentestings with corporation companies. I did use raspberry pi 4 too. As usual there are some tools which can't run but to the get understanding concept running with linux. It seems like pc will be the right approach. Even though Kevin Mitnick uses intel macs.
Some of my friends use docker containers to run kali linux on M1/M2. Though it's just a headless image so we gotta install even the basic tools ourselves and they use Gui tools like burp suite on the host machine itself
@@davidbombal I own the M2 and I run all my VMs from a dedicated hypervisor, proxmox, and it’s like 20 times better than VMware, it’s super efficient and can run on super low power systems so you can pretty much run them all the time.
This helped. As someone planning to take{pass} the Sec + exam in Jan, I'm going to be doing quite a few labs. I'll get one with 8gb ram to be covered with all the lab stuff.
I think, in order to run more VM's on your machine smoothly, apart from Ram, you do need a good CPU with higher number of cores/threads to assign to each vm. If you really want a mac, i think get one with an intel cpu.
Not for nothing David, but I think you should emphasize the performance between operating systems. I am pretty sure windows does the best job of EXECUTING the VM software, thus as a result, I think the platform has the highest efficacy of running virtual machines. Also compatability is higher with windows. As a novice engineer, why do I feel like I am the only one saying this?
I bought a 12-year old laptop and it runs most Linux distros pretty well. My idea behind it: if a distro runs pretty well in the old computer, the same distro will be phenomenal in my desktop.
hello David sir! thank both of you, it was a great mind-opening lesson, I have got one thing from this lesson "in hacking 80% is human, 20% is a machine" ❤💯
I've had a NAS for decades for backup, etc. I have upgraded it to 10th gen Intel, increased the RAM to 16GB, installed Debien and use VMware for my VM test environment. It helps that I use VNC so my main PC can access the Debien system to manage and use my VMs.
I just use my laptop (the one I use for school) to practice, though once I've saved up I'm going to purchase a second laptop that is only for hacking related activity.
Prediction: a network interface with monitor mode, and something plain looking. (e.g. if you have Hak5 stickers all over it, then it's not particularly stealthy)
i was always wondering about the cpu requirements of all the hacking tools, it's good to know they are more heavily relying on the ram - thanks for addressing this ! i'm also motivated to try and dig out my ancient raspberry pi and see how it can cope 😃
@@davidbombal i remember i had even found a miniature screen and keyboard and a ton of adapter cables to connect everything, and then apparently i had moved on to something else. very short attention span, ugh.
Personally I prefer dual boot option instead of using virtual machine.. Due to more compatibility with my hardwares... Anyway its depend on person... Thanks for the video..
I primarily want a Laptop with a built-in ethernet port, an iGPU, and socketed RAM/Drives/WiFi. This gives me the best flexibility on load-out and generally longer battery run-time. Personally I'm a fan of the Ryzen CPUs because the iGPU is very capable for general use and has some decent horse-power behind it if needed. On a side-note, I also prefer laptops with a barrel-jack for charging as using USB-C charging tends to be temperamental long-term and ends up taking away the decreasing number of ports on modern laptops.
You can try Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro - 6850U. I guess it can adapt all you need (AMD Ryzen, Ethernet port, good keyboard). However, you cannot upgrade RAM (when the RAM already on laptop was 16GB DDR5-6400MHz), but you can still upgrade SSD.
I don’t know about 7th-10th gen intel. Ram capacity was often limited back then, topping out at 16gb wasn’t uncommon. I also had enough heat and fan issues with an 8550u. There’s enough $300 5500u basic new laptops, Black Friday sales are coming. Phoronix liked the Ideapad 3. I tossed in a 32gb ddr4 kit last week for $80. Ddr5 is getting pushed now, ddr4 is cheap. Nvme support could be sketchy in laptops 5 years ago. You want to run vms, drive iops matters. Intel ax200 is cheap and well supported. Step up to $500 and there is plenty of 11th gen intel business laptops being deprecated right now. You can run external gpu. KVM/qemu is free, if you’re running Linux. You get a marginally nicer keyboard and panel with a business laptop vs the el cheapo student laptop. Apple silicon support with virtualization sucks, and there’s nothing like watching your performance take a massive dive or deal with library incompatibility. I don’t feel like buying virtualization software on my Mac, it’s already hardware constrained at 16gb/512 m1.
The Apple Silicon devices having poor virtualization support is all on Apple for not putting in the resources to support their hardware in that way. Ultimately Apple don't care all that much about such users anyway, if you aren't using their OS they aren't going to help you out because otherwise it's additional cost to them, and Apple is all about rinsing peoples wallets dry. At this stage, anything from the Intel 8th Gen Core i7's & AMD Zen 2 Ryzen 5 or better is more than enough for a great experience running virtualization software & Virtual Machines. Pair the above with at least 16GB of RAM, preferably 32GB of RAM, Equip it with a 1TB SSD (Even a 2.5" SATA drive from a leading brand is good enough!), Get something with a keyboard that's nice to type on, and a device focused on functionality & you'll be golden. Removable Battery is a big plus, but very rare from devices that are such an age or newer.
Thank you!! I was trying to decide if the Vivobook I was looking at but this video alleviated that stress and I just picked a machine I like and going to run with it.
Talking bout Mac, i’ve used my old 2011 macbook air, with 1.6GHz i5 and 4GB ram. I’ve erased the macOS to install kali on it, beside some lil issues on first installation since few people did it, its just dope now. It does the job very well, and its just great to bring everywhere: small enough, light and i love typing on this keyboard. It has been very useful to start learning offsec and still can be used for dictionary attacks when it comes to password cracking. However one interesting point that i liked using macs with macOS beside kali, is that it’s a UNIX system and many tools i use on kali can be installed with homebrew or manually, and running it.
I have two laptops I use in my hacking kit. One is a 12 year old HP floating and AMD processor and Windows 8.1. It is fantastic for writing Windows Scripts. The other is a 4 year old IBM thinkpad floating a Celeron and Kali Linux. I plan on upgrading to a third laptop when the economy starts down turning. That's when higher end gaming laptops start showing up in pawn shop for lower cost.
Love your show David. And especially the k one's with "OTW"! Learning so much on the side together with my Linux learning and Python exploring! Keep 'em coming! (Sorry I can't afford to join the fanclub atm..😔)
I would have to disagree with you on 16:35 david , sure the m1 machines had some issues in the past when they were first released and yes they can only run arm64 images on it but i've been using kali arm64 image on it for quite a while and also i have given my OSCP and OSEP exams using the macbook air m1 and the experience has been flawless so far! I never had an instance where i needed a tool and it wasn't compatible with kali arm64 image ( except rustscan ), also in their repo they have almost all tools compiled for arm64 arch so installing anything from their repo was and is flawless! ( Im using VMware fusion from start and i frequently change my os from kali and parrot )
This is good feedback. In my experience, I've found that the ARM version works well in Parallels, but the issue is using x86/x64 images from places like vlunhub. How did you get around that? Make your own images? Or use online labs etc? Others have complained about applications not working - seems like you had an issue as well, but found a solution :)
@@davidbombal Thank you for the reply!, yes i agree that you cant run x86/x64 images from vulnhub thats why I use online labs offsec playgrounds,HTB etc. but theres a application called UTM which i guess lets us run x86/x64 images i havent tested it yet. about applications not running i havent noticed any of it and i have used c2 frameworks like covenant as well as all the typical applications we need for a Active Directory pentest and so far i havent got issue with compatibility :D , if you can specifically tell me which applications you are talking about i can test them :)
The problems on Kali are what others have told me, not me personally. More great feedback - thanks for sharing so others can read this discussion as well :)
@@snailsec Gonna just second what you said. I hear Kali works great on M1 chips, but not the M2 chips yet. Although I hear Asahi Linux is making strides in M2 compatibility.
I used the same Thinkpad X61 up until two years ago. Before that I used an X22. I currently run a first gen m1 MBP and it is more than enough. I have been "hacking" for 32 years and working in the Security industry since 1996. All you need is a shell and an OS that doesn't require a lot of effort for compiling tools.
I'm a red teamer and i owned a MBP m1 max for a while, I used it for 3 months and sold it. Many tools in Kali and libraries of C/C#/C++ are not supported for ARM. I will definitely not choose MBP for hacking but I' ll see if there will be some improverment and support for ARM in the future to change my mind. Building a EXSI or Docker might solve the ARM support problem, but I am a lazy guy:)
Hacker House publish some good books on using Kali and identifying vulnerabilities. My hacktop has 256gb 2280 SSD, 240gb SSD and 8gb D4 ram with an AMD Radeon CPU. It runs Win 10 and Kali on WSL2 relatively quickly, even multiple VM can be used. It definitely wasn't a $3000 Alienware laptop.
My fav would be a laptop with a serial interface, a good battery life (cause you never know how many hours you are without a power outlet), Ethernet Nic and WiFi Nic able to go into promisicious mode. We used to be satiesfied with simple 2.4Ghz adapters but in a lot of places they have cut of 2.4Ghz. And now with 6E you really need the whole spectrum. You alse need very simpel stuff as fx reading CDP or LLDP info from a wired connection. Attacking VLANS on switches is not new. In fact I think Cisco had an advisory on this topic this week. I you are a company be aware of people just popping by putting a cable into an ethernet plug in your office. Use 802.1x or any other Zero trust platform. The same for Wi-Fi even it is harder.
9-pin serials are nice for custom interfaces, however, you can USB to serial now if a serial interface isn't available (which is so much better for power consumption). Also, I have found that old 9 or 25-pin serial connectors on laptops always have piss-poor battery life.
@@lennyaltamura2009 Well you are correct. But still my dream laptop would have a nine pin serial interface :) You never know what kind of old equiptment you find in a rack. I myself normally use USB to serial. I find that StarTech products works out of the box.
I am using a 2 core 8 GB Windows XP laptop from 2008 to run Linux that I dug out of storage in 2023. It works just fine and I use it daily. You shouldnt need to spend more than 50$ for a Linux machine to get started. Also if you dont have a Linux machine just spin one up in the cloud for a few cents an hour and SSH in. People are often tricked by this idea that they can all the sudden justify a new purchase because they are learning a new skill. In fact you will be better off starting with a low spec machine and limited software - it will force you to be more resourceful.
Thank you guys for the advice. Freshmen college student for software design. Learning visual studio and html 5. Aside from Linux or c# what language is important for me to study the most? Like Linux is obvious to the amateur, but what is number 2 on the list?
What about Tails(on a USB stick with a separate encrypted data stick) instead of a VM. If you had to ditch your cheap used laptop, you could still take your OS and data with you. For VMs, wouldn't QEMU/KVM be better? Wouldn't a pi have the same problems as M1?
Dear David/OTW, thank you for the amazing content. I would like to see something about firewalls/IDS/IPS systems. You would rarely see such content. Thank you again for sharing knowledge.
If you use hardware in your learning that is not perfect, you can discover the limitation yourself. This is a valuable skill in the real world, especially if you are able provide clear evidence for why you need an upgrade, such as a benchmark test or documentation saying your hardware is not compatible.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
OTW and I get asked this question all the time: "What's the best laptop to buy for hacking?" In this video we answer that question and more.
// Menu //
00:00 - Coming up
00:32 - Intro
00:38 - Sponsored Segment
01:41 - "The perfect laptop for hacking"
04:50 - Getting the right CPU
06:52 - The importance of RAM
07:49 - WiFi adapters for WiFi hacking
09:45 - "Gear doesn't matter"
12:57 - Virtual Machines for beginners
15:40 - What OS do I need?
16:23 - VM issues with M1 & M2 chips
19:27 - Kali bare-metal and Kali VM
22:10 - Which Linux is better?
23:30 - Dragon OS // New OS for SDR
24:19 - Know your Linux!
25:26 - Don't waste money on the greatest and latest tech
26:34 - Desktop vs Laptop
27:51 - Learn hacking on a phone
29:48 - The Raspberry Pi // Effective learning environment
32:23 - Linux can work on old computers
33:01 - Conclusion
// Videos mentioned //
Best hacking laptop (2021 edition) with Neal Bridges: ruclips.net/video/jsMp65-piIc/видео.html
Kali Linux install on Raspberry Pi: ruclips.net/video/PqRVo2niA_8/видео.html
Kali Linux install on Android (rootless): ruclips.net/video/KxOGyuGq0Ts/видео.html
Kali Linux USB boot: ruclips.net/video/n2olKupv9fY/видео.html
Kali Linux WSL install: ruclips.net/video/UXyS-xofGNM/видео.html
Kali Linux WSL2 GUI Apps: ruclips.net/video/mp5DdgZP7ns/видео.html
Kali Linux Windows install: ruclips.net/video/W6_nBr8SbPE/видео.html
Kali Linux macOS: ruclips.net/video/fcrSmbUIHuo/видео.html
// Mr Robot Playlist //
ruclips.net/p/PLhfrWIlLOoKNYR8uvEXSAzDfKGAPIDB8q
// David's SOCIAL //
Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb
Twitter: twitter.com/davidbombal
Instagram: instagram.com/davidbombal
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal
Facebook: facebook.com/davidbombal.co
TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal
RUclips: ruclips.net/user/davidbombal
// Occupy The Web social //
Twitter: twitter.com/three_cube
// OTW Discount //
Use the code BOMBAL to get a 20% discount off anything from OTW's website: davidbombal.wiki/otw
// Occupy The Web books //
Linux Basics for Hackers: amzn.to/3JlAQXe
Getting Started Becoming a Master Hacker: amzn.to/3qCQbvh
// Other books //
The Linux Command Line: amzn.to/3ihGP3j
How Linux Works: amzn.to/3qeCHoY
The Car Hacker’s Handbook by Craig Smith: amzn.to/3pBESSM
Hacking Connected Cars by Alissa Knight: amzn.to/3dDUZN8
Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel!
so glad you brought up apples hew chips. they do not support vm’s because windows needs a intel chip to run
I need some help from someone with experience nd can teach well
Plz
Ik basics and some python but need more help now
I want to learn more, how can I start
"Too ashamed to ask, too scared to ask or too embarrassed to ask or whatever", David you are a legend you are both legends, thank you both for everything you do!
Thank you. This is my job - ask the questions no else does 😀
@@davidbombal ok does that apply to all of us? Can I have 5 minutes of your time at some point to ask for some advice? My situation is quite unique and I have no doubt you'll be able to get quite a video out of it because I know I'm not the only one in said situation but given it's nature many are afraid of reaching out for advice on the subject.
Yes I agree, with this comment! Freaking Legend and amazing teacher!!! Thank you for all of the videos/ information. I haven't started yet but only because I'm not ready to yet. I downloaded a hacking app that teaches hacking that I have yet to try (ETHICAL HACKING UNIVERSITY).
Again thank you for all of your time and information! I will be sure to watch all the way through for you to get the watch time on your videos,
I also appreciate the Mr.Robot references, I haven't watched it yet only because I'm super busy lately and just getting back into the desire to learn this important skill!
Thanks again and I will be sure to help you any way I can!
Yes you both absolutely are legends. However the reason why I love you both so much is the fact that your humble you're both very humble Legends Connor and that is the most important point of them all I do need help with something if you could just even direct me towards any methods videos you made or any tools Weatherby Windows Linux even Mac I don't have a Mac but I guess I could borrow one but preferably windows or Linux to crack the screen bypass the screen lock on an iPad 7 is the most imperative one right now. I've searched and I would rather learn how to do it properly rather than screw around with things like 10 of shareware they charge unit exorbitant amount of money for something I'm sure I can do it myself. And just FYI I'm still learning hacking cracking all that but I do know some osint tools as well as some other ones and I may not be anywhere near an advanced level hacker but I'm nowhere near I knew be; put it this I'd be
@David Bombal and a damn fine job your doing with it!
"80% the hacker and 20% the machine" those words might have been the most influential words in hacking
Bought a T560 for $200 and been using it for 2 years. My daily driver with my own custom tools. Thanks for the informative video. Looking for my dream laptop to be honest. Main reason why I clicked on your video. Stay safe.
I love these interviews with OTW they’re just so different from the other interviews.
Glad you enjoy them!
i like how these interviews always digg a little into some issues, but then find back to the main theme very cleanly. Keeps things interesting.
I have an old T440p Thinkpad, swapped a couple of things to make it better and still works like a dream.
T430 t440p 👍
Same T440p swapped CPU added M.2 love it will not trade it in.
hello my dear
I bought a Razer basic 2021 model last year for both gaming and teaching myself programming. Main reason I'm commenting is I bought the book "Linux basics for hackers" last summer. Great videos, keep up the good work!
What about the book. Is it useful?
Can I use a macbook for hardcore hacking and cybersecurity?
@@chuchuanaghxD, bro was not watching the video
Hi David, Thank you for getting such knowledgeable guests. I took some of your courses for obvious reasons. I enjoy your teaching methods, straight and to the point. Thanks again!
Thank you Lenny!
Disk I/O is also worth mentioning.. slow HDD can give headaches.
Maybe laptops with SSDs help alot.
@@silentwater79 My gaming laptop has a 1 TB HDD for my massive Steam library, and a 256 GB SSD for Windows.
@@silentwater79 I have one but never got around to cloning my HDD to it. I've uninstalled 30 GB of Quake Champions as it didn't have enough space to update anyway.
@@silentwater79 Hint: Ask Google.
That was every laptop when I last went to buy a laptop, and that was 6 years ago. I did choose one with an extra HDD though.
OS on a SSD, 100gb is more than enough if you run Linux. But still, RAM first, and then it's CPU after that
I have an old HP ZBook (i7, 32 GB RAM) that is my go-to laptop for penetration testing and vulnerability analysis, even though it is a heavy old brick it is ideal for throwing in to a rucksack. The best thing about using an older style laptop over one that is "state of the art" is that is has enough USB inputs to attack WiFi dongles, external keyboards, mice etc. My best advice is if you are going mobile, buy one that you don't mind if it gets knocked or bumped.
i have old intel pentium dual core processor and 4gb ddr2 Ram. Some how i managed to learn pentesting. And i found some p4 bugs too..
Can i use a Chromebook....
@@brianwood2666 u can use AWS eor any other services
HP ZBook (i7, 32 GB RAM) is an OLD BRICK???
For CPU, one thing you miss is core count. Speed is kind of irrelevant. Ram is great, but running multiple processes or VM's with a dual or quad core is going to start to impact performance the more you stretch it out.
core quality for me, there are older xeon cpu with 16 cores but beat up by newer 8 cores cpu
My desktop has an x99 board with a zeon e5 2690 v4 that I got for $100 on aliexpress. My favorite hacking laptop (I have 4 moderately aged ones) is a $60 Chromebook that was built in 2015 and has a m.2 port. I hate chrome, but I love my old Chromebooks! 😂
when OTW said "its an exponential curve!", you drew a linear curve :/
Virtual Box recently announced that they're bringing Apple Silicon Mac support in the latest version. This was announced one week after this video was uploaded. Thank you David!
never knew about this UTM worked not bad though in kali
David am a medical doctor from Uganda 🇺🇬 I loved tech but I didn't have a chance up to now when I was introduced to alx software engineering bootcamp.
My goal is to be a senior cyber security analyst. I found one of your videos but up to now am following your series and note down some small notes 📝.
Am gaining alot and getting a guide of what the field of cyber security is.
Thanks a lot David 🙏
Hey bro, am a Ugandan too living in Qatar can we get in touch so we can share some knowledge
Hey, i also joined the same bootcamp, finishing my fourth month now
Two Ugandans here😂😂
to save 33mins, no laptop is mentioned in this video
i think that the best laptop for hacking needs:
lot of usb ports, in case you need multiple external devices (note that a mouse is essential)
minimum 16gb of ram for running multiple machines or running heavy programs like metasploit, burpsuite etc. If you are using a virtual machine, kali will need a lot more resources to run smoothly, compared to a bare metal installation.
A cpu that have a good number of core/threads rather than speed, because in vm you will have to give to multiple machines at least 1/2 cores to run smooth
the gpu is useless in my opinion
I also suggest a laptop that have a good keyboard that feels good, because it can make difference and frustrate you if there are missing keys , defective shit after some time and more
Im thinking about getting a usb keyboard for my laptop. my typing speed is like 2-3x faster on a keyboard.. like 120 wpm.. i might be 60 on a laptop keyboard.
Would this be laughable hahahaha
I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro with 10GB RAM and 256Gb SSD. Works flawlessy. I am yet to come across any tools that can't be installed either via brew, macport, or github. They all work fine.
I prefer the dell rugged systems. They can be had pretty cheap second hand from various educational or industrial sales. You can configure them with different cards. I have 2 wifi cards and a 4GLTE. The hard drives are in removable caddy for swapping. The batteries are hot swap. They have good port options like serial ports and multiple Ethernet jacks. They are more durable ect. They have great bios feature, for instance function keys for immediately turning off the antennas with one press and ghost modes.
Great segment!
A big thing you need for running multiple VMs is disk space… get a big HDD or SSD to make sure you have enough space for the VM partitions.
HomeBrew your intel based Mac and you’re set up for a lot of stuff. Definitely not everything that runs on Linux, but it helps ha ha.
Keep up the amazing work!!!
Great tips Dustin! Thank you for always sharing and watching my videos :)
What's the story on Homebrew vs. Macports? And what is the future?
I have a dell optiplex 790mt with 32gb of ram 3ssd’s and a HDD. I also have a Chromebook and a dell inspirion from 2010 or 2011, that I threw an SSD and 16gb of ddr3 ram into. That dell straight up cost me $50 all in and my desktop (primarily for gaming) was like $500 all in. Old PC’s are WAY more capable than people realize.
I’m also building a monster from an old XEON and a X99 board. That will be my “hacking” desktop. I’ll even throw my old rx550 gpu in there to use both of my tvs as monitors.
I use a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 in my home lab as all the the components are compatible with nearly all linux distros and its an incredibly versatile laptop
Same. ThinkPad is probably the top choice for burner laptop. Mine is more than 10yo. Still bomb. Most people use Lenovo for that too
I like what he is saying about the computer requirements. I get asked the question "what is a good computer" and I always ask "What will you be doing with it" or some variant of that as it really comes down to the use case... you could spend thousands on high end hardware and still have a poor experience because you bought the wrong hardware for the job.
VPN doesn't work if you log into anything with a real email because the cookies and tokens still know who you are and what you are doing 🤷♂ Easiest way to have privacy is to use a new vm with tor-browser and don't use any real emails or logins on that vm. Also, as far as laptop DO NOT get apple M1 to many compatibility issues.
I took a Macbook from the company. I installed Kali OS instead of mOS. It works perfectly because I used the excellent hardware from the MacBook. In a word, everything flies. 😀🛸🛫
which mac did you use?
hello brother can ask you about some infos, like can I have your ig or discord thank you
Hey David. I have an M1 macbook pro with 32gb ram. I have had no issues learning hacking on it. No issues running windows or linux and playing around in the Parallels environment. Virtual Box just released their arm addition for M1 Macs. Sure I am not advanced at all, but for the beginner stage I am in, it works pretty flawlessly.(Side not, I got this macbook pro not for hacking but for work. My job involves me creating Microsoft server and windows environments to run demos for client on certain types of software we sell. I love that it doesn't slow down at all and has plenty of power to breeze through the presentations, often only on battery, for 5+ hours of testing.) Great content as always. Would love to connect with you and pick you brain as a Cybersecurity student with ADHD that is obsessed with trying to absorb everything like a super power. Have a great day!
How did you download virtualbox for M1 MacBook Pro? I’m struggling to do it . And where do you get the ISO for the virtual machines ?
@@NuggetPotatoe I too am also struggling! Please I need help with this as well!
everyone knows its the 10 year old think pad
The cheaper it is the easier it is to dispose of
exactly
I agree just picked up a think pad that's 20gb ram 512gb ssd 3.8ghz processor speed for $150
I use a Macbook 2020 Intel chip for pentesting, i use vm and dual boot, Mac is okay for me btw
Thanks for sharing! I have intel and arm Macs. Problem with Intel I find is it gets hot and the fan makes a lot of noise :(
Mac is really good, it gives you the best of Unix and Mac. Also, you can use docker :p
@@davidbombal Yes it gets noisy on heavy usage, once you're not on the MacOS, it heats up as well and gets noisy but when on bare metal it's a little bit better.
Same. I use a mac, it runs command line tools and burp very well, the interface doesn't make my nose bleed like every Linux DE does and if I need more, I spin VMs up (that I can snapshot and revert at will).
Yes, intel on Macs went too hot. In other words, I remember Mac OS managed the heat well in older OS versions, but with newest OS version, the heat lost the control. I think Apple lowered their priorities on the heat issue on older machines and it is still manageable. For low budget, I'd stay on Mac book or Mini because their battery is very good and stable but go on with Linux. It is working very well. If you have extra money like I do, I would jump to ARM M1 Mac book because the battery life is so great and much less heat. For now, I have both machines, Intel and ARM. I can do the stuff on both machines. Once things get matured on ARM, I can leave Intel out of it.
M1X with Fusion and fire up all the Linux you want. No need for Windows IMO
I laugh off whoever comes into our org with a Mac for security...I need an engineer not someone who wants to fit in and feel cool.
Do you have an extra laptop you don't use you help I with it I am a beginner in ethical hacking and I don't have a laptop.
Great video as always David I’ve learnt so much from this channel and the different guest you bring on the channel
Very happy to hear that :)
I find the older ThinkPads (T-series workhorses) are awesome. Lots of HW options and easily swappable.
Agreed, 100%. When I saw the title and thumbnail I thought "Thinkpad!"
I have problem with Bluetooth module on them with new Kali linux
The X220 because keyboard :-)
I got an old t440p on eBay for $120. I got 16gb of ram for it for another $20 or so, and an m.2 ssd for another $20 or so. It has a core i5 in it, which I may replace with an i7 later on, just to have 4 cores, but the little old i5 runs just fine.
@@hokuspokus8570 I noticed that too. I don't think Kali installs the BT drivers by default. I'm going to mess around with it on my next day off.
Desktop for me, have never liked laptops, the only laptop I have is an old chromebook that now runs Linux Mint. I got massive works with my desktop(s) Kali is nice, but bloated, just run Debian and install what you want, X the bloat you don't want or need. Love your channel, thanks for the things you show and explain. Props.
I did my CS degree with a Thinkpad T420. I'd like to point out that some older machines limit the amount of RAM you can install. So it might be better to get a slightly newer machine and add more RAM later on.
So should I get a thinkpad x250?
Adding more ram is good weather it would be used for hacking or not. lol
I can’t tell you guys how much i enjoy this series. I‘m now 1 year into my apprenticeship as an IT support and infrastructure specialist and i‘m so into cybersecurity. But unfortunately even tho there are actually a lot of videos and articles on how to start or learn, having someone who i can be pretty sure is a reliable source and also always having things explained easy and up to date.
I really love this keep on doing it and maybe well see each other at sum hackathon :) ❤
Older cheap laptop with upgradable ram, get an SSD, more ports the better, turns out older cheaper laptops are more feature rich than the newest bleeding edge.
Worthwhile to find semi decent build quality, something that is reliable and upgradable is golden.
Old business devices tend to be higher quality and more survivable compared to consumer junk.
Basically avoid trash tier netbooks and chromebooks, you don’t need a gaming behemoth. A decent multi core with good ram goes rather far.
Quality business machines tend to have plenty of parts or spares available, makes maintaining and repairs easier as well, and if it’s common, support is greater.
So what laptop do u suggest?
Great stuff as always!
I know that more RAM = more virtual machines, but what CPU is the best when it comes to virtualization?
amd
64 ram, 2 TB SSD and any latest processor is better 😁😁😁..
More cores = more virtual machines and less freezes
I’ve listen to John Hammond so much that I can totally hear his syntax on the “dark hacker” voice. Awesome video!
Wow, great narrative.
Nobody emphasizes about using one's brains (80%) more than just the machine
Thank you. Agreed. The person is much more important than the computer.
My setup as Mac lover and Pentester - I own a Mac Pro M2 and I am running Kali on VMware Fusion. But I use this only for training, CTFs, etc. So for day-to-day work I have a decent laptop with macOS, that I can use for various casual tasks, that requires multiple steps to set up on Linux. For real pentest purposes I always use bare Kali on a 5 year old laptop with Intel, and it works like charm.
We want you ?
I use a brand new Asus L210. It has a 11 inch display, is super light, and even though it only has 64G of storage it has an M2 slot. It cost only $160 and for another $40 you can add a 500G M2. Kali installs with no problem and believe it or not the built in wifi card will do monitor mode. I also have a Alfa card but the internal one will work with github drivers. I use my gaming pc for cracking hashes but besides that the inexpensive Asus does everything I need and fits in a very small sling bag. Amazon still has them in stock though I see they are up to $168 now.
Plus if u really wanted to u could set it up so you could network into ur desktop for GPU accelerated cracking.
wait, storage or memory?
@@Freakazoid12345 i would bet he's talking about storage. 64gb of memory on a cheap laptop like that is probably not even supported.
Yes it is storage. Ram is 4 gig
Just got Proton with email included and Drive. Love it :)
Enjoy :)
I've used Linux on my phones for years with Termux. Year by year I find it more useful and an essential part of everything I do with laptops, desktops or servers. Especially on the road.
For hacking, having Termux or Kali on the phone is "invisible". You can go anywhere and just sit down and tap away, and everyone is just like "dude, he's gotta have a lot of followers!" :-D
I downloaded termux but every time I try installing something in there it says repository under maintenance.
What can I do
Can you download on iOS appstore
@@fwmyalt2873 termux is only for abdroid but ISH is on the appstore
The choice of a laptop is only important insofar as "Can it run the system I want?" which can be an important question. As you guys said, start with whatever you can. But, when you can afford to upgrade, my recommendation would be to get a laptop that is able to run Qubes OS. It's not *exactly* an OS really, I mean it is, but not a traditional one. It's a Type 1 Hypervisor and is absolutely perfect for compartmentalization. It's perfect for security use to keep yourself safe while at the same time, you can set up any number of VMs that you want for various purposes. You could have a Qube set up for your personal stuff separate from everything else in its own virtual environment, then have another set up to run Dragon OS in its own isolated Qube that you use just for SDR stuff, and yet another set up for Kali to be your main pentest system and more Qubes set up to be various test targets and so on. It's why I got a laptop with 64 gigs of RAM, I can run a good number of my Qubes at once.
Which laptop is it?
@@ignaciofuentes7755 The laptop that I got for running Qubes? I got the Tuxedo Pulse 15 with 64 gigs of RAM and a 2 TB nvme SSD and a Ryzen 4800H CPU. Pretty sure there are better laptops now, but this one works wonders for me.
@@DarkGloComics You might want to remove this comment and ask your question as a comment on the video rather than as a reply to my comment, because this question was clearly not directed at me since I am all for people scrubbing themselves from such intel-gathering sources by using systems like Qubes OS and services like VPNs and incogni and such. Privacy is a right I will never help anyone to violate.
@@little-wytch look, I don’t want to hear about your politics. No is sufficient.
@@DarkGloComics take a chill pill mate. All I did was offer you a suggestion for how to get an answer and explain my personal reason for refusing to answer. Digital hygiene is important for personal safety and has nothing to do with politics. If you're seeing politics everywhere, consider taking a vacation or maybe getting a massage. 😛
Macbook Air M1, UTM (hypervisor for Apple silicon) and Kali aarch64! Bombastic!
I discuss the issues I have found with M1 and M2 in this video. I love the M1/M2s but there are problems with virtualization of x86/x64 VMs unfortunately. I don't find that UTM works that well for emulation. What has your experience been?
@@davidbombal ok I have to admit, I didn't see the whole video when I've replied... I will detail my answer after watching the whole video! Back in 10 minutes!
Ok here I am, the first important thing to say is: when it comes to virtualization UTM is great, everything works fine with the aarch64 version of Kali (or Debian, or Arch, you name it), but when it come to emulation it's a real disaster! I was referring to ARM Linux only, and it's great with Apple Silicon, you can take advantage of all the M1's amazing features, such as 15 hours of battery life, retina display, hdpi fonts and so on.
This is similar to my experience of the M1/M2. Virtualization of ARM is good, but not emulation of x86/x64. I prefer Parallels to UTM and that is what the Kali developers recommend (but it is a paid product).
@@davidbombal Thanks David, I’m downloading my evaluation copy of Parallels! ❤
I love how OTW can put so much expression into his voice and not move the slightest bit while talking!
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I use a t480 bought for 320 euro in germany plus 32 gb ram ddr4 2400 mhz for 40 euro on a local deal t480s are the first lineup where even the lowest i5 is a quadcore and the laptop is the last one to support this power bridge thingy its also quite slim too, i love it.
Hi David, i'm glad you highlight the main issues with apple m1 silicon macs with vms but you said it right.Yeah UTM too. That is what i've been wondering all along the transitioning to apple silicon macs will be a big problems with pentesters if they are dealing with pentestings with corporation companies. I did use raspberry pi 4 too. As usual there are some tools which can't run but to the get understanding concept running with linux. It seems like pc will be the right approach. Even though Kevin Mitnick uses intel macs.
Some of my friends use docker containers to run kali linux on M1/M2. Though it's just a headless image so we gotta install even the basic tools ourselves and they use Gui tools like burp suite on the host machine itself
That's cool :) Biggest issue I think is running VMs from www.vulnhub.com/ and other places that require x86/x64
@@davidbombal I own the M2 and I run all my VMs from a dedicated hypervisor, proxmox, and it’s like 20 times better than VMware, it’s super efficient and can run on super low power systems so you can pretty much run them all the time.
@@NahImPro same here
@@NahImPro so you dont have issue running things on m1/m2?
@@NahImPro can you explain more about proxmox ?
This helped. As someone planning to take{pass} the Sec + exam in Jan, I'm going to be doing quite a few labs. I'll get one with 8gb ram to be covered with all the lab stuff.
Did you get your cert?
I think, in order to run more VM's on your machine smoothly, apart from Ram, you do need a good CPU with higher number of cores/threads to assign to each vm. If you really want a mac, i think get one with an intel cpu.
Not for nothing David, but I think you should emphasize the performance between operating systems. I am pretty sure windows does the best job of EXECUTING the VM software, thus as a result, I think the platform has the highest efficacy of running virtual machines. Also compatability is higher with windows.
As a novice engineer, why do I feel like I am the only one saying this?
Its a Thinkpad T-Series. They are perfect, easy to upgrade and support Monitor Mode out of the box
I bought a 12-year old laptop and it runs most Linux distros pretty well. My idea behind it: if a distro runs pretty well in the old computer, the same distro will be phenomenal in my desktop.
hello David sir! thank both of you, it was a great mind-opening lesson, I have got one thing from this lesson "in hacking 80% is human, 20% is a machine" ❤💯
I've had a NAS for decades for backup, etc. I have upgraded it to 10th gen Intel, increased the RAM to 16GB, installed Debien and use VMware for my VM test environment. It helps that I use VNC so my main PC can access the Debien system to manage and use my VMs.
I just use my laptop (the one I use for school) to practice, though once I've saved up I'm going to purchase a second laptop that is only for hacking related activity.
Depends on the virtual machine product and running a Kali inside, can be a mission with passing USB devices into the VM.
Prediction: a network interface with monitor mode, and something plain looking. (e.g. if you have Hak5 stickers all over it, then it's not particularly stealthy)
i was always wondering about the cpu requirements of all the hacking tools, it's good to know they are more heavily relying on the ram - thanks for addressing this !
i'm also motivated to try and dig out my ancient raspberry pi and see how it can cope 😃
You're welcome! Raspberry Pi's are great for learning!
@@davidbombal i remember i had even found a miniature screen and keyboard and a ton of adapter cables to connect everything, and then apparently i had moved on to something else. very short attention span, ugh.
Just here to thank you two for all of the advice and guidance 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Mr David please will you teach us how to use python in reverse engineering for educational purpose
John Hammond has a lot of great content on his channel :)
@@davidbombal thank you for ur quick answer, i'll search for it, thnx again for what you do for helping us to discover this wonderful tech world
Thanks David sir,
I am watching reviews of laptops to buy one
And here your video is here to help...
I hope this helps you. OTW tells us what we need :)
Since you mentioned bare-metal vs. VMs, what is your opinion on bootable USB drives? Great video as always!
Treat them as "portable", don't rely on them for every day
Personally I prefer dual boot option instead of using virtual machine.. Due to more compatibility with my hardwares... Anyway its depend on person...
Thanks for the video..
I primarily want a Laptop with a built-in ethernet port, an iGPU, and socketed RAM/Drives/WiFi. This gives me the best flexibility on load-out and generally longer battery run-time. Personally I'm a fan of the Ryzen CPUs because the iGPU is very capable for general use and has some decent horse-power behind it if needed. On a side-note, I also prefer laptops with a barrel-jack for charging as using USB-C charging tends to be temperamental long-term and ends up taking away the decreasing number of ports on modern laptops.
All these features are available in victus 15 with cheaper prices
You can try Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro - 6850U. I guess it can adapt all you need (AMD Ryzen, Ethernet port, good keyboard). However, you cannot upgrade RAM (when the RAM already on laptop was 16GB DDR5-6400MHz), but you can still upgrade SSD.
Fantastic video as usual.
Thank you and your host, David.
I always learn something from everyone of your great videos.
Wow Dav. You really asked all the questions in my head❤🎉.
Thank you
I don’t know about 7th-10th gen intel. Ram capacity was often limited back then, topping out at 16gb wasn’t uncommon. I also had enough heat and fan issues with an 8550u. There’s enough $300 5500u basic new laptops, Black Friday sales are coming. Phoronix liked the Ideapad 3. I tossed in a 32gb ddr4 kit last week for $80. Ddr5 is getting pushed now, ddr4 is cheap. Nvme support could be sketchy in laptops 5 years ago. You want to run vms, drive iops matters. Intel ax200 is cheap and well supported. Step up to $500 and there is plenty of 11th gen intel business laptops being deprecated right now. You can run external gpu. KVM/qemu is free, if you’re running Linux. You get a marginally nicer keyboard and panel with a business laptop vs the el cheapo student laptop. Apple silicon support with virtualization sucks, and there’s nothing like watching your performance take a massive dive or deal with library incompatibility. I don’t feel like buying virtualization software on my Mac, it’s already hardware constrained at 16gb/512 m1.
The Apple Silicon devices having poor virtualization support is all on Apple for not putting in the resources to support their hardware in that way.
Ultimately Apple don't care all that much about such users anyway, if you aren't using their OS they aren't going to help you out because otherwise it's additional cost to them, and Apple is all about rinsing peoples wallets dry.
At this stage, anything from the Intel 8th Gen Core i7's & AMD Zen 2 Ryzen 5 or better is more than enough for a great experience running virtualization software & Virtual Machines.
Pair the above with at least 16GB of RAM, preferably 32GB of RAM, Equip it with a 1TB SSD (Even a 2.5" SATA drive from a leading brand is good enough!), Get something with a keyboard that's nice to type on, and a device focused on functionality & you'll be golden.
Removable Battery is a big plus, but very rare from devices that are such an age or newer.
Thank you!! I was trying to decide if the Vivobook I was looking at but this video alleviated that stress and I just picked a machine I like and going to run with it.
Damn those stock Cybersecurity videos always send chills down my spine.
Talking bout Mac, i’ve used my old 2011 macbook air, with 1.6GHz i5 and 4GB ram. I’ve erased the macOS to install kali on it, beside some lil issues on first installation since few people did it, its just dope now.
It does the job very well, and its just great to bring everywhere: small enough, light and i love typing on this keyboard.
It has been very useful to start learning offsec and still can be used for dictionary attacks when it comes to password cracking.
However one interesting point that i liked using macs with macOS beside kali, is that it’s a UNIX system and many tools i use on kali can be installed with homebrew or manually, and running it.
Another great video David. You have the best content hands down.
Thank you very much Jason!
I always feel relaxed when I hear his voice. @OTW
Thanks David Bombal.
Love it, great encouragement for the beginners, well done David.
“The CPU does not matter but invest in RAM for virtual machines”
Sweet my non-hyperthreaded dual core with 64GB of RAM will do nicely.
Fantastic content with OTW as always :)
Thank you Sid. Glad you enjoy it!
I have two laptops I use in my hacking kit. One is a 12 year old HP floating and AMD processor and Windows 8.1. It is fantastic for writing Windows Scripts. The other is a 4 year old IBM thinkpad floating a Celeron and Kali Linux. I plan on upgrading to a third laptop when the economy starts down turning. That's when higher end gaming laptops start showing up in pawn shop for lower cost.
Love your show David. And especially the k one's with "OTW"! Learning so much on the side together with my Linux learning and Python exploring!
Keep 'em coming! (Sorry I can't afford to join the fanclub atm..😔)
CPU: Any Ryzen processor, or any Intel quad 4th gen and above
RAM: 16GB
Harddrive: SSD drive
I would have to disagree with you on 16:35 david , sure the m1 machines had some issues in the past when they were first released and yes they can only run arm64 images on it but i've been using kali arm64 image on it for quite a while and also i have given my OSCP and OSEP exams using the macbook air m1 and the experience has been flawless so far!
I never had an instance where i needed a tool and it wasn't compatible with kali arm64 image ( except rustscan ), also in their repo they have almost all tools compiled for arm64 arch so installing anything from their repo was and is flawless!
( Im using VMware fusion from start and i frequently change my os from kali and parrot )
This is good feedback. In my experience, I've found that the ARM version works well in Parallels, but the issue is using x86/x64 images from places like vlunhub. How did you get around that? Make your own images? Or use online labs etc? Others have complained about applications not working - seems like you had an issue as well, but found a solution :)
@@davidbombal Thank you for the reply!, yes i agree that you cant run x86/x64 images from vulnhub thats why I use online labs offsec playgrounds,HTB etc. but theres a application called UTM which i guess lets us run x86/x64 images i havent tested it yet. about applications not running i havent noticed any of it and i have used c2 frameworks like covenant as well as all the typical applications we need for a Active Directory pentest and so far i havent got issue with compatibility :D , if you can specifically tell me which applications you are talking about i can test them :)
The problems on Kali are what others have told me, not me personally. More great feedback - thanks for sharing so others can read this discussion as well :)
@@davidbombal Pleasure is all mine :D
@@snailsec Gonna just second what you said. I hear Kali works great on M1 chips, but not the M2 chips yet. Although I hear Asahi Linux is making strides in M2 compatibility.
David you are one of the best interviewers I've seen! Thank you so much for this video and your channel in general!
I used the same Thinkpad X61 up until two years ago. Before that I used an X22. I currently run a first gen m1 MBP and it is more than enough. I have been "hacking" for 32 years and working in the Security industry since 1996. All you need is a shell and an OS that doesn't require a lot of effort for compiling tools.
He's right about RAM. Especially if you are using burp suite.
Also thanks for the content, please keep making more, I'll continue to tell my friends about this channel
I'm a red teamer and i owned a MBP m1 max for a while, I used it for 3 months and sold it. Many tools in Kali and libraries of C/C#/C++ are not supported for ARM. I will definitely not choose MBP for hacking but I' ll see if there will be some improverment and support for ARM in the future to change my mind. Building a EXSI or Docker might solve the ARM support problem, but I am a lazy guy:)
ARM for windows is coming in 2024 by Nuvia and snapdragon I think this will change things on support side in linux
My favorite machine is my Acer R11 Chromebook running galliumOS. $50 on ebay... touchscreen, tablet mode, mon mode adapter...it's Great
Glad to be the first viewer, much love brother
Thank you for watching and supporting me!
Hacker House publish some good books on using Kali and identifying vulnerabilities. My hacktop has 256gb 2280 SSD, 240gb SSD and 8gb D4 ram with an AMD Radeon CPU. It runs Win 10 and Kali on WSL2 relatively quickly, even multiple VM can be used. It definitely wasn't a $3000 Alienware laptop.
Thank you for your hard work ❤
You're welcome 😊
MacBook Pro M1 13” with kali linux on ETM ! Best battery with POWERFUL cpu !
My fav would be a laptop with a serial interface, a good battery life (cause you never know how many hours you are without a power outlet), Ethernet Nic and WiFi Nic able to go into promisicious mode. We used to be satiesfied with simple 2.4Ghz adapters but in a lot of places they have cut of 2.4Ghz. And now with 6E you really need the whole spectrum. You alse need very simpel stuff as fx reading CDP or LLDP info from a wired connection. Attacking VLANS on switches is not new. In fact I think Cisco had an advisory on this topic this week. I you are a company be aware of people just popping by putting a cable into an ethernet plug in your office. Use 802.1x or any other Zero trust platform. The same for Wi-Fi even it is harder.
9-pin serials are nice for custom interfaces, however, you can USB to serial now if a serial interface isn't available (which is so much better for power consumption). Also, I have found that old 9 or 25-pin serial connectors on laptops always have piss-poor battery life.
@@lennyaltamura2009 Well you are correct. But still my dream laptop would have a nine pin serial interface :) You never know what kind of old equiptment you find in a rack. I myself normally use USB to serial. I find that StarTech products works out of the box.
@@traver1965 I agree, we all have our favorites. Startech USB to serial ~ Tried and true!
I am using a 2 core 8 GB Windows XP laptop from 2008 to run Linux that I dug out of storage in 2023. It works just fine and I use it daily. You shouldnt need to spend more than 50$ for a Linux machine to get started. Also if you dont have a Linux machine just spin one up in the cloud for a few cents an hour and SSH in.
People are often tricked by this idea that they can all the sudden justify a new purchase because they are learning a new skill. In fact you will be better off starting with a low spec machine and limited software - it will force you to be more resourceful.
Thank you guys for the advice. Freshmen college student for software design. Learning visual studio and html 5. Aside from Linux or c# what language is important for me to study the most? Like Linux is obvious to the amateur, but what is number 2 on the list?
I would say python, it gets recommended alot because of it's potential. Look at books like "black hat python"
@@offdazaza2769 java
Life long goals for me is Master C++,Java,Python and JavaScript. Think those are solid languages to learn
I really learn so much in this video for a beginner. I really feel so inspired by it thank you.
Can we get a free laptop for those who are interested but don't have
What about Tails(on a USB stick with a separate encrypted data stick) instead of a VM. If you had to ditch your cheap used laptop, you could still take your OS and data with you.
For VMs, wouldn't QEMU/KVM be better?
Wouldn't a pi have the same problems as M1?
Much love from Kenya my Brother. Very educative and informative
I'm being trying to run VM on M1 Max and the only one that's work is parallel
cool content david, i like Librem 14 or Alienware lap's
Very cool!
Do you see a difference between the gaming laptop and let’s say a dell laptop?
Dear David/OTW, thank you for the amazing content. I would like to see something about firewalls/IDS/IPS systems. You would rarely see such content. Thank you again for sharing knowledge.
That was really awesome content. Thanks David and OTW!
If you use hardware in your learning that is not perfect, you can discover the limitation yourself. This is a valuable skill in the real world, especially if you are able provide clear evidence for why you need an upgrade, such as a benchmark test or documentation saying your hardware is not compatible.