If this is absolutely the way you’d prefer to go, you can go through the age old process of “Find a suitable 3-4 year old T or X series Thinkpad on eBay with specs you want. Zero-out/wipe/reset everything on arrival. Install ” and save quite a bit of cash.
I picked up an X280 last year for sub $300.00 - 4C/8T i5, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, tons of useful I/O, 1080P display, healthy battery. It’ll be my “daily driver” laptop away from my primary and work machines for a few years.
Office hardware surplus is a hell of a drug.
You don't need anything special. It should run Windows and VMware Workstation Pro or virtualbox. Ideally 16gb ram, 8gb for host and 4gb for 2x kali.
It depends if you want to use it for anything else really but I'd say snapshots are the most important thing so you can revert easily. You don't need a massive password hacking rig with a huge GPU.
I’ve recently bought a framework laptop and it’s been amazing so far. Price is also fair as you can buy separe parts from amazon and assemble (i bought ssd and ram separately). https://frame.work/ca/en
I did my OSCP with a M2. You will have no problems for the exam.
In regard to the storage. I would either trade your M1 in and buy a new Mac (you can get some good refurbished models with more storage and ram). Or just get an external drive to save your personal files or buy some cloud storage like iCloud.
There are tools that will not work. But the tools you need for OSCP are. In context to OP question. He doesn’t need to spend money on an alternative laptop just to do the OSCP Exam.
Sorry that’s not correct
I have an M2 and a Windows laptop . Several PEN200 modules (tools) simply don’t work from my Mac. Offsec suggestion was using dockers and other complex workaround simply because it’s not possible .
You can gamble and use your Mac but there is no warranty that you will face issues when compiling some stuff , in case you have to .
And Windows laptops are cheap. You just need one with enough RAM and a SSD drive , that’s it .
The only tools that are not working on Pen 200 are Veil and Shellter. The rest are binaries from Offset that you have to execute to get the flag, that don't work. To get the full 100% on the Pen200 you need to use docker or use complex workarounds. However you will be able to do the Exam or Challenge Labs and get more then 95% for the bonus points . For Client side attacks you have a Windows host to connect to and you can compile exploit on the target machine if necessary. So it's not really a gamble.
It's my opinion that when you have a good system that there is no need to get a cheap system and spend more money.
No, some tools don’t work . Nxc doesn’t work . And ligolo is different as well. Haven’t tried ligolo on my Mac but is not same binaries .
It’s a different process architecture and not all tools are ported . Even mods there suggest using a Windows box .
NXC is working on Mac (it’s written in python). Ligolo-ng is also working , obviously you need the arm binary for the proxy and the amd64 binary for the agent.exe on the target.
Well we can go back and forth.
From my experience you can do the Pen200 and Exam with an apple silicon chip, as I did.
I'm going through the pen200 now on an m3 with Fusion. Just to test, I was able to install nxc by first installing rust devtools. I was also able to add pwsh by downloading it from Microsoft. Are there any other apps anyone has had issues with other than Veil and Shellter ?
Cheap enough , about $500. terrible screen. But enough space and ram for your labs. Cheap enough for a burner/labs at DefCon, wwhf or bsides.
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Micro-Edge-i7-1160G7-Graphics-Accessories/dp/B09MLNCZ2V?pd_rd_w=9fEbF&content-id=amzn1.sym.e0ae54a7-cc19-4a6c-a6ef-01924426ff7b&pf_rd_p=e0ae54a7-cc19-4a6c-a6ef-01924426ff7b&pf_rd_r=43M9PKGHBYDQKFYM9QFK&pd_rd_wg=PKF7T&pd_rd_r=159d960f-798f-4fa5-875b-0ab4ebd006b5&pd_rd_i=B09MLNCZ2V&psc=1&ref_=pd_basp_m_rpt_ba_s_12_sc
Yeah specs of your laptop should be decent. Maybe a bit tight on space though but I’m sure you can cleanup. Only problem is when cross compiling, you might want to try UTM as mentioned above. Do note that it may reduce the performance of your VM.
I also use VMs for my setup but the data on the VM are mounted over a remote NAS so I can easily recreate them during issues or whenever I do upgrades. That keeps space occupied by the VMs on my laptop at minumum.
You don’t need a new laptop, you don’t need an x86 laptop. You need to configure your environment to run x86. I wrote this blog on how to do that.
This is a “friend link” to my blog, so even if you don’t have Medium account you can view it. Best of luck.
https://medium.com/@tacitPanda/armed-for-x86-how-to-run-and-compile-x86-executables-on-kali-arm-36c3dba7e0a2?sk=b8808440eda7fd9fc557fc7263b20d61
If this is absolutely the way you’d prefer to go, you can go through the age old process of “Find a suitable 3-4 year old T or X series Thinkpad on eBay with specs you want. Zero-out/wipe/reset everything on arrival. Install” and save quite a bit of cash.
I picked up an X280 last year for sub $300.00 - 4C/8T i5, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, tons of useful I/O, 1080P display, healthy battery. It’ll be my “daily driver” laptop away from my primary and work machines for a few years.
Office hardware surplus is a hell of a drug.
No need to spend 1500 bucks. For the exam I used my T480 (16GB RAM) with a custom Kali image and a second monitor.
You don't need anything special. It should run Windows and VMware Workstation Pro or virtualbox. Ideally 16gb ram, 8gb for host and 4gb for 2x kali. It depends if you want to use it for anything else really but I'd say snapshots are the most important thing so you can revert easily. You don't need a massive password hacking rig with a huge GPU.
Go buy one from BestBuy, take your exam, and just return it.
This guy hax
I’ve recently bought a framework laptop and it’s been amazing so far. Price is also fair as you can buy separe parts from amazon and assemble (i bought ssd and ram separately). https://frame.work/ca/en
I did my OSCP with a M2. You will have no problems for the exam. In regard to the storage. I would either trade your M1 in and buy a new Mac (you can get some good refurbished models with more storage and ram). Or just get an external drive to save your personal files or buy some cloud storage like iCloud.
It’s a toss up . There are several tools that don’t work or have not even been ported to ARM yet.
There are tools that will not work. But the tools you need for OSCP are. In context to OP question. He doesn’t need to spend money on an alternative laptop just to do the OSCP Exam.
Sorry that’s not correct I have an M2 and a Windows laptop . Several PEN200 modules (tools) simply don’t work from my Mac. Offsec suggestion was using dockers and other complex workaround simply because it’s not possible . You can gamble and use your Mac but there is no warranty that you will face issues when compiling some stuff , in case you have to . And Windows laptops are cheap. You just need one with enough RAM and a SSD drive , that’s it .
The only tools that are not working on Pen 200 are Veil and Shellter. The rest are binaries from Offset that you have to execute to get the flag, that don't work. To get the full 100% on the Pen200 you need to use docker or use complex workarounds. However you will be able to do the Exam or Challenge Labs and get more then 95% for the bonus points . For Client side attacks you have a Windows host to connect to and you can compile exploit on the target machine if necessary. So it's not really a gamble. It's my opinion that when you have a good system that there is no need to get a cheap system and spend more money.
No, some tools don’t work . Nxc doesn’t work . And ligolo is different as well. Haven’t tried ligolo on my Mac but is not same binaries . It’s a different process architecture and not all tools are ported . Even mods there suggest using a Windows box .
NXC is working on Mac (it’s written in python). Ligolo-ng is also working , obviously you need the arm binary for the proxy and the amd64 binary for the agent.exe on the target. Well we can go back and forth. From my experience you can do the Pen200 and Exam with an apple silicon chip, as I did.
Weird. I have used both ligolo-ng and nxc on the ARM version of kali. Both with Parallels and UTM on an M1.
I'm going through the pen200 now on an m3 with Fusion. Just to test, I was able to install nxc by first installing rust devtools. I was also able to add pwsh by downloading it from Microsoft. Are there any other apps anyone has had issues with other than Veil and Shellter ?
Anything with 16GB of RAM , SSD drive that run Windows will work.
I see a Lenovo thinkpad and it’s been great.
Cheap enough , about $500. terrible screen. But enough space and ram for your labs. Cheap enough for a burner/labs at DefCon, wwhf or bsides. https://www.amazon.com/HP-Micro-Edge-i7-1160G7-Graphics-Accessories/dp/B09MLNCZ2V?pd_rd_w=9fEbF&content-id=amzn1.sym.e0ae54a7-cc19-4a6c-a6ef-01924426ff7b&pf_rd_p=e0ae54a7-cc19-4a6c-a6ef-01924426ff7b&pf_rd_r=43M9PKGHBYDQKFYM9QFK&pd_rd_wg=PKF7T&pd_rd_r=159d960f-798f-4fa5-875b-0ab4ebd006b5&pd_rd_i=B09MLNCZ2V&psc=1&ref_=pd_basp_m_rpt_ba_s_12_sc
Yeah specs of your laptop should be decent. Maybe a bit tight on space though but I’m sure you can cleanup. Only problem is when cross compiling, you might want to try UTM as mentioned above. Do note that it may reduce the performance of your VM. I also use VMs for my setup but the data on the VM are mounted over a remote NAS so I can easily recreate them during issues or whenever I do upgrades. That keeps space occupied by the VMs on my laptop at minumum.
You don’t need a new laptop, you don’t need an x86 laptop. You need to configure your environment to run x86. I wrote this blog on how to do that. This is a “friend link” to my blog, so even if you don’t have Medium account you can view it. Best of luck. https://medium.com/@tacitPanda/armed-for-x86-how-to-run-and-compile-x86-executables-on-kali-arm-36c3dba7e0a2?sk=b8808440eda7fd9fc557fc7263b20d61
Could try UTM for $10 and virtualise x64