Setup HoneyDrive on VMware (Workstation, ESXi, etc)

UPDATE: While this post and the methods described are still relevant, I have written a new guide here: HoneyDrive 3 VMware guide

Many honeypot enthusiasts who wanted to try out HoneyDrive had difficulties importing the OVA file into VMware software like ESXi, Workstation, etc. I use VirtualBox to develop HoneyDrive and there seems to be an incompatibility between the two virtualization product series. You can always install VirtualBox and easily import HoneyDrive there but I realise this might not be suitable for everyone. So, here are some tips to set up HoneyDrive on VMware (you can try any one of them):

The first one comes from UABgrid Collaboration Environment and you can find it here: https://dev.uabgrid.uab.edu/wiki/VirtualboxToEsxi.

The second comes from commenter “Rob” who utilized VMware’s OVF tool: http://bruteforce.gr/honeydrive-desktop-released.html#comment-779920644 to create multiple live pages like https://comprogear.com/what-level-of-compression-socks-do-i-need/ and https://comprogear.com/best-compression-socks-for-edema/

The third is the failsafe/straightforward one which Richard Bejtlich used to try HoneyDrive 0.2, and commented about it here: http://bruteforce.gr/honeydrive-desktop-released.html#comment-779920647. Basically, OVA is like a compressed tar archive. You can uncompress it using a common utility (e.g. 7zip) and you get HoneyDrive’s virtual disk file in a VMDK format. Then, you can simply manually create a new virtual machine in VMware and attach this file as hard disk. Bear in mind that Ubuntu keeps a record of the MAC addresses for each NIC, and since you create a new VM from scratch I think that the virtual NIC inside HoneyDrive might change its name to eth1 from eth0 (on the contrary, importing the OVA retains the generated MAC). This shouldn’t be a problem (defining a specific interface to use was not required in any of the honeypot software as far as I recall), although it can be fixed very easily by editing udev rules (see: http://www.kkoncepts.net/node/107) for “normalization” reasons.

Last but not least, another guide comes from commenter “Setareh” who wrote about his experience here: http://bruteforce.gr/setup-honeydrive-on-vmware-workstation-esxi-etc.html#comment-979839942. Setareh used the VBoxManage utility to convert between virtual disk formats and successfully imported HoneyDrive into VMWare Workstation 8.

EDIT: user “Hawkie” has commented here to announce the creation of VMWare-converted version of HoneyDrive. You can download it as a torrent from TPB: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/9402030/Honeydrive_0.2_nectar_edition_vmware_image. Bear in mind that I take no responsibility for the validity or security of this particular project! Use at your own risk.