September 2008 Archives

Installing Hacme Bank on an XP Pro VMWare Image

Whether you're evaluating a new vulnerability assessment tool, or looking to hone your application hacking skills, the Hacme Bank application by FoundStone, Inc offers a perfect "victim" for you to use as a testing target. Hacme Bank simulates an online banking website with the added bonus of having numerous vulnerabilities purposely designed in for you to discover.

In this write-up I'll walk you through the necessary steps for getting the application up and running on a Windows XP Professional VMWare image. I prefer this setup for a couple of reasons. First, if an unrecoverable error condition occurs (while hurling malicious packets at the application perhaps?) you can simply revert the Virtual Machine back to a known good state. Second, by positioning Hacme Back on an isolated machine I'm able to use my everyday penetration testing rig as the attack platform.