pfSense is a free and open-source firewall and router software. It is a great tool and one of the key parts of our SOC Lab infrastructure.
First, I installed netgate, which is an installer that you must use to install pfSense.
The file is a .iso.gz file so I couldn’t simply unzip it. I kept getting an error message.
So I checked to see if the SHA256 hash of the file I downloaded matched the true SHA256 hash. They matched.
I wasn’t sure how to get pfSense onto a virtual machine from here, so I began using the netgate installation guide.
I had to download 7-Zip in order to extract the .iso file.
After extracting the .iso file using 7-Zip I started making a VM in VirtualBox. It should be noted I ran into an issue later in the installation process. The issue was with this step. I should not have made the type Linux, subtype Debian, and the version Debian 64-bit.
As you can see it ended up causing my installation to fail. So I had to go back and create a new VM.
The main thing I did differently with the new VM is change the “Type”. Previously I made the type Linux, the subtype Debian , and the version Debian 64-bit. With the new VM I made the type BSD, the subtype FreeBSD, and the version FreeBSD 64-bit. The other adjustment I made was increasing the Base Memory to 4096 MB. After making these adjustments the installation was successful.
After adding the new VM you need to go to Settings -> Network and then we establish 3 adapters like you see above.
After opening the new VM we must accept the copyright agreement.
If you don’t interact with the VM window for a few minutes it makes you login again. (Login: admin / Password: pfsense)
I made em0 the WAN and em1 the LAN
Before rebooting make sure you unmount the .iso file from the drive so when we reboot the machine we will be able to use pfSense. If you don’t do this step you will have to reinstall it again and again.
After reboot we arrive inside pfSense. The last step we want to complete now is assigning network interfaces. So we typed “1” to assign network interfaces.
After assigning the network interfaces as seen above, we are done. For the next part in the SOC lab series, we will work on setting up Active Directory.
