How to Build a CTF Lab That Will Skyrocket your Cybersecurity Skills. Part 1

Simulators are to pilots what CTF challenges are to cybersecurity professionals. Just as pilots sharpen their skills in a controlled environment before taking to the skies, cybersecurity professionals can level up by diving into CTF challenges in a dedicated lab. Building a CTF lab isn’t just an exercise — it’s a game changer. After building my first lab, I was hooked, and my skills improved exponentially. Today, I’m going to guide you step-by-step on how to create your own lab using VirtualBox.

Building our Firewall

To start our lab we will need to build a firewall using pfsense so we can create our cyber range. If you do not have VirtualBox Downloaded you can download it here:

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.1.4/VirtualBox-7.1.4-165100-Win.exe

After you get VirtualBox installed you will need to download the Pfsense here is direct download link for Pfsense:

https://archive.org/download/pfSense-CE-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64/pfSense-CE-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64.iso

Now let’s get started on adding it to our VirtualBox.