PTArch

PTArch

Published: at 08:20 AM

Table of contents

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Purpose

The Purpose is

I will call it PTArch (Penetration Testing Arch)

Why do I choose Arch?

Disclaimer. I do not consider it as a new Distro, it is just Arch designed for Penetration Testing and most probably only for me.

Setup

Initial Steps

First let’s make a basic Arch Installation as I did in the following Article - Setup Arch Linux…, I chose Disk Space of 20G, and with different GUI.

root@archiso ~ # lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0    7:0    0 792.2M  1 loop /run/archiso/airootfs
sda      8:0    0    20G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   500M  0 part # EFI
├─sda2   8:2    0  17.5G  0 part # FS
└─sda3   8:3    0     2G  0 part # SWAP
sr0     11:0    1   1.1G  0 rom  /run/archiso/bootmnt

Additionally, I installed yay.

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin.git
cd yay-bin
makepkg -si

GUI - Budgie

Why Budgie? Because I want to try something new.

yay -S budgie xorg xorg-xinit

# For Starting
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
vim ~/.xinitrc
# write following instead of last 5-6 lines of commands
export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Budgie:GNOME
exec budgie-desktop

vim ~/.xserverrc
# write following 
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/Xorg -nolisten tcp "$@" vt$XDG_VTNR

# Autostart X at login
vim ~/.bash_profile
# Add Following:
if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" = 1 ]; then
  exec startx
fi

# Start The DE
startx

As a Result very simple but cute DE: Budgie

Packages

Some Packages for better experience

yay -S networkmanager 
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
systemctl start NetworkManager.service

# Terminal
yay -S alacritty  # terminal emulator and ctrl alt T for opening it
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']"
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ name 'Open Alacritty'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ binding '<Control><Alt>t'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ command 'alacritty'
# Get a theme from https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty-theme
# import should be added to this ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml

# Nice Command Alternatives
yay -S btop  # nicer variant of top
yay -S bat # better cat
yay -S eza # better ls
yay -S jq # to read JSON
# add following to ~/.bashrc and to root's basrc too
PS1='\[\e[96;1m\]\u\[\e[0m\] \[\e[38;5;214;4m\]\w\[\e[0m\] \[\e[96m\]>\[\e[0m\] '
alias ls='exa --icons --color=always --group-directories-first'
alias ll='exa -alF --icons --color=always --group-directories-first'
alias la='exa -a --icons --color=always --group-directories-first'
alias l='exa -F --icons --color=always --group-directories-first'
alias l.='exa -a | egrep "^\."'
alias tree='eza --tree --icons'
alias cat="bat -p"

# Other Commands
yay -S fastfetch # For showing to others
yay -S eog # image viewer

yay -S thunar # file manager and ctrl alt E
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/', '/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/']"
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/ name 'Open Thunar'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/ binding '<Control><Alt>e'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/ command 'thunar'

yay -S firefox # browser and ctrl alt W
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/', '/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/', '/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2/']"
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2/ name 'Open Web Browser'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2/ binding '<Control><Alt>w'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2/ command 'firefox'


# Other commands for comfortable experience
yay -S freerdp netcat openvpn tmux wget unzip

# VMWare tools 
git clone https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches.git   
cd vmware-tools-patches  
sudo ./patched-open-vm-tools.sh

Toolset for a Hacker that you are free to customize and add more.

yay -S --noconfirm nmap wireshark-qt dirb gobuster nikto smbclient smbmap enum4linux  metasploit postgresql sqlmap impacket john ffuf hashcat hydra steghide gdb netdiscover

For the time, these tools are enough. Final Result is a Penetration Testing Environment that is not as great as Kali, but I liked it.

Ptarch-look

ArchISO

Let’s convert the Arch based Penetration Testing Environment to new Linux “Distro”. The tool for this is archiso. It is too complicated, I just somehow followed the wiki guide, and I do not want to include this heresy over here :P.

Ptarch-iso

Size of resulting iso is 2.2G, which I consider a good result. It kind of working sample of my distro, but it is quite shitty to install.

Conclusion

My purpose was to create a new Linux Distro with the things I need for Pen Testing. However, I would accept, PTArch is not that good as other Pentesting distros. The most important is the things we learnt in the journey to achieve the Goal.

The resulting ISO:

Sources