In this video I'm going to show you how to install Kali Linux within VirtualBox on a Windows 11
computer there are various ways to get Kali Linux up and running you could use dual booting where
you boot between Windows and Kali you could use a USB flash drive various options I've shown you
those in previous videos which I've linked below. In this example I've got three Virtual Machines
running Kali Linux on this Windows computer. I've got it running within VMware Workstation
player and I've got two images running within VirtualBox the reason I've done this is during
the recording of this video I had issues with the image that I downloaded from the Kali website,
so I'll show you how to get around those issues by showing you how to import the Virtual Machine as
well as install it using an ISO image. My Windows installation picked up the latest release of Kali
that I downloaded as containing a virus so I had to install it using an ISO but I'll
show you both methods in this video. You may prefer to use VMware in the past I preferred
VMware but I found that VMware has issues and is limited in some ways as an example you can't use
snapshots with VMware Workstation player but you get snapshots with VirtualBox. In this video I'm
covering a whole bunch of things including how to enable VT-x in the BIOS of an Intel
laptop as well as AMD-V in the
BIOS of an AMD laptop. I as I mentioned encountered various issues during installation
I didn't want to take out some of the problems because you may encounter those same issues that
I did I've left a whole bunch of options in this video but use the timestamps to jump to
the various parts. As an example if you simply want to install Kali using an ISO image use this
timestamp hopefully I've covered a whole bunch of options that will help you get this working
on your computer I'm often asked which is the best way to run Kali Linux and as its true with
a lot of things in life it really depends depends on you depends on what options you want. You can
run Kali using WSL there are disadvantages and advantages to using WSL. You could use VMware
Player, you could use the VirtualBox. Advantages and disadvantages to both and as I often like to
say if you're unsure try different options and see which works best for you as a starting point
however look at using VirtualBox on a Windows computer using this within a virtual machine
because that's going to be one of the easiest ways to get up and running. VirtualBox is free
so there's no cost to using it. Kali Linux is available for free so there's nothing stopping
you getting this up and running. This is what's called a type 2 hypervisor in other words we are
running a hypervisor on a host Operating System the host Operating System in this example is
Windows the guest Operating Systems are these Kali Linux virtual machines running within Windows. So
we've got our hardware which is our laptop, on top of that we've installed Windows our host Operating
System and then we've installed a hypervisor which in this case is VirtualBox and then we are
running virtual machines within the hypervisor. This once again is one of the easiest ways to
get started allows allows you to start learning Linux, allows you to start learning hacking and
other technologies without having to reinstall your computer. I've said enough now let me show
you how to get this installed and up and running [Music] Now before you install Kali Linux one of
the first things you want to do is make sure that VT-x is enabled on your Intel laptop or AMD-V is
enabled on your AMD laptop. So on the Windows taskbar I'm going to go to Task Manager I'm
going to go to Performance I'm going to select CPU and I'm going to make sure that virtualization is
enabled. You need to have this option enabled if it's not enabled I'm going to show you how
to enable VT-x in the BIOS right now if it's already enabled on your laptop then jump to this
timestamp where I'll show you how to download VirtualBox Kali Linux and get it installed and
running. Okay so if it's not installed what you want to do is shut down your laptop,
so when your laptop boots up you need to use the special hotkey to get it to boot into BIOS so in
this case it's a Dell laptop so it was F12 on an Asus laptop as an example would be F2 you just
need to use the special hotkey to boot into BIOS if you're not sure which key to use have a look on
the Internet for your specific laptop. The BIOS of laptops varies but for this specific laptop
I'm going to go to BIOS setup I'm going to go to Virtualization and I'm going to make sure that
Intel Virtualization Technology or VT-x is enabled that's actually been enabled on this laptop but if
yours is not enabled then enable that apply your changes and then exit out of the laptop and boot
back into Windows. I've actually got Kali Linux dual booting with Windows on this laptop hence me
having a Kali Linux boot window which I then used to boot into Windows you obviously won't have that
if you've just got Windows installed but that's an example of how to boot into the BIOS on an Intel
computer. So on this Asus laptop I've pressed F2 to go into the BIOS of the Asus laptop I'm going
to go to the advanced mode in BIOS and then go to Advanced here and what you'll notice is SVM mode
is enabled in the BIOS of this computer that's very similar to AMD-V or VT-x on an Intel computer
so make sure that AMD-V is enabled or in this case SVM mode and then save your changes and exit out
of BIOS so I'll save those changes and exit and boot back into Windows and now I'll be able to
install Kali on this Asus laptop running with an AMD processor. One of the things you're going to
want to make sure is that your computer meets the minimum requirements to run Kali Linux it depends
on what you want to install but for this example we're going to opt for the default desktop and the
Kali Linux default packages you really need at least 2GB of RAM and 20 gig of disk space. I'll
show you when we download the Kali virtual machine the actual settings that come with it for example;
2GB RAM, 4 CPU cores and 80 gig of disk space. The moral of the story is more is better. So
2GB RAM is the minimum but I'd probably want to at least run with 4GB RAM you want to give it 80 gig
of disk space as an example you're going to want to give it as many cores as your computer supports.
Okay first thing we need to download is VirtualBox so you can get that by going to VirtualBox.org
I've put a link below this video scroll down and click on download VirtualBox 7.0 that's the
version at the time of this recording if there's a later release when you watch this video then
download that release. VirtualBox is available for various platforms Windows, macOS, Linux and others
but for this example I want to download VirtualBox for Windows so I'm going to save that to my
computer while I'm here I'm going to download a 7-Zip you can go to the URL 7-zip.org or use the
link that I've put below I'm going to download the executable for Windows 64-bit and click save and
then I'm going to go to kali.org and download Kali Linux this is quite a big download so you probably
want to get this downloaded while you're doing other things things depending on your internet
connection so, kali.org click on download in this example we're going to download a virtual machine
so click on virtual machine I'm using 64-bit hence the requirement to have VT-x or AMD-V enabled in
the BIOS of the computer and for this example I'm going to download VirtualBox. We're told that it's 2.6
gig in size so I'm going to click download to download that file, it's busy downloading
according to this would take about 6 minutes. The version that's downloading is 2023.3 about
4 minutes left I've actually pre-downloaded a version of Kali just changed in the last few days
at the time of this recording so I've got 2023.2 it's the same process however. Okay so we need to
install the software first thing we need to do is install VirtualBox so I'll double click on
the executable Windows complains but I'm going to install this anyway as always you use software at
your own risk but this is very reputable software so I wouldn't worry too much about VirtualBox.
I'm going to say yes to install it it's a very simple installation I'm going to basically just
go with the default so I'm going to click next I'm not going to customize the installation click next
we're told that network interfaces will be created. So if you see new virtual interfaces that's normal so
if I go to Control Panel, Network and Internet Network and Sharing Center change my adapter
settings you'll notice at the moment that I have an Ethernet connection that's how I've connected
to the internet I'm physically downloading files using a wired connection I've got a wireless
connection and some VMware connections what will happen now is when we install VirtualBox we'll
see VirtualBox interfaces added to the computer that's normal so I'm going to click yes we told
that they're missing dependencies so I'm going to install those and I'm going to click install
and as you can see VirtualBox is now installing what you'll notice now is we have a VirtualBox
Ethernet adapter so again that's normal and then I'll click Finish to start a VirtualBox.
Okay so there you go I've got VirtualBox installed what I want to do however is I want to go back to
VirtualBox and I want to download the Extension Pack this supports for example RDP, disk encryption
and some other options which you can read about on the VirtualBox website I'm going to click on
the all supported platforms link and click save to download that double click on the extension pack
installation file. Now I've previously installed this so I'm going to reinstall it you obviously
will click install to install the software you need to scroll down through the license
agreement and if you agree obviously read it and then click agree and then say yes to install the
software that's now installed so my Extension Pack is installed and VirtualBox is installed. Okay so
let's have a look at the Kali installation has that downloaded. Now the Kali installations use
7z software or 7-Zip software so what we need to do is install 7-Zip so I'm going to double
click on the 7-Zip installer and click install anyway so yes to install it and then I'm going
to click install to install 7-Zip and click close. That will allow me to extract the quality 7z file
and then import it into VirtualBox. Okay so this is something interesting my antivirus or my Windows
computer has detected that there's a virus in that Kali Linux VirtualBox installation, it didn't pick
this up in the old version but it's picking it up in the new version so what I'll do for this
example is use my previously downloaded version of Kali 2023.2 if you want to you could use the
installer image so rather than downloading a virtual machine you could try downloading
using the ISO rather than a pre-built virtual machine. The thing with Kali is it's running
tools that Windows may determine is a virus or is a malware. Okay so here's the 7z file if it
downloaded without any issues you would simply do this on the version that you downloaded I'm going
to click show more options select 7-Zip up and I'm going to extract the file to a subfolder okay so
that's being extracted you can see my virtual box folder here what I can do in a VirtualBox
obviously you need to wait for that to extract is Click add I'm going to go to my downloads folder
click virtual box and select the file that was extracted and click open and there you go my Kali
virtual machine is imported into VirtualBox before I run it however I'm going to click on settings to
check the settings. I suggest you do this to make sure that it's compatible with your computer. So
as an example under System it's been allocated 2GB RAM, under processor it's been allocated 2
cores, under storage the Kali virtual machine has been allocated 80 gigs of space. So just make sure
that for instance you adjust the CPU so I could as an example give this 4 cores I could increase
increase the memory to 498 to make it faster and click OK simply set those settings to the
correct settings for your laptop and then click Start and hopefully this will boot up without any
problems. Okay so you can see VirtualBox has started and Kali Linux will boot up
and there you go I've got Kali running on my computer default username is kali
password is kali and I can log in and there you go I could resize this
move it around and make changes. Now one thing on this virtual machine this virtual machine
settings has got this by default using NAT which might be okay you might be happy to use NAT. So
I could ping google.com as an example using this virtual machine and that works. This once again is
like running a computer within your computer so all the settings apply so I could as an example
shut this down. If you want to connect to that virtual machine from your local computer what
you want to do is go to settings go to Network and you want to change this to Bridged just be
aware that doing that exposes Kali to your local network and someone else could get access to this
computer and Kali has a hacking platform isn't necessarily what you want to expose to your
local network but if you did this within your home network as an example and wanted to give
yourself access to your local Kali virtual machine you could do this so it's booting up
and there you go. I could log in once again and what I'll do here is use the command IP
address to see my local IP address you can see it's got this IP address [Music] 192.168.0.114
on my Windows computer I'll open up a command prompt ipconfig this
has got this IP address 192.168.0.166 so what I'll do is ping 192.168.0.114
so there you go I could ping the Kali virtual machine from my Windows computer and then I
could do other things for instance enable SSH and SSH to the Kali virtual machine.
Okay so there you go I've got Kali Linux working within Windows 11 by downloading
the virtual machine from the Kali virtual website but what you could do is go to
Machine new virtual machine and create a new Kali virtual machine so I'll just say
Kali ISO because I'm creating this from an ISO image and the ISO image that I'll select
is the one that I downloaded and I'll click next give it the amount of RAM that you want so 4096
number of CPUs let's say 4 click next, how big do you want the disk space to be so I'll set it
the same as the Kali virtual machine click next and click finish. So I've got the Kali virtual
machine running off of the image that I downloaded from the website and here I could start up my ISO
image and install Kali this way. It's going to take more work because I'll have to go through
the installation process but that's not very difficult so what I'll select is graphical install
okay my language is English you could specify your location let's say you United Kingdom or
United States so in my case it's UK so I'll select that keyboard that I'm using is British and you
could just specify the keyboard that you want to configure so I'll select British English keyboard.
Okay network is being discovered we're now asked to configure our hostname I'll just go with the
defaults Kali I'm not going to specify a domain we need to specify a user I'm just going to go
with Kali and the password this is obviously not a great password but I'll just use Kali
similar to what we have with the virtual machine when that's downloaded and I'll click continue
I'm going to use the entire disk click continue
again so I'm going to finish the partitioning and write changes to the
disk and click continue I'm okay with these changes being made so say yes and continue
and as you can see the base system is installed.
Okay now you need to choose the software that you want to install I'm going to go
with the defaults and click continue so the software is now being unpacked and
installed. So this is a good time to go and get a coffee it's going to take a while to install.
Okay so we're asked if we want to install the GRUB boot loader, the answer is yes
so I'm going to click continue I'm going to specify the hard drive and then click continue
the installation is now being finished.
Okay there you go we told that the installation is complete. We're told
to make sure that we remove the installation media so I'll go to machine settings storage
and we can see that the ISO DVD image is no longer connected so that's good so I'm
going to click continue and there you go the virtual machine is now rebooting
and Kali Linux has now booted up I'll log in and there you go I can resize it it's currently using
Network Address Translation so you could change that to bridged if you want to have the virtual
machine on your local segment but I can still connect to the internet using NAT if I want
to and there you go I can get to the Kali website. So in this example I've now got Kali running from
the VirtualBox image that I downloaded as well as from an ISO. The Kali virtual machine from
ISO is available in documents virtual machines Kali Linux you can see the amount of space that
it's using is about 5GB, the extracted VirtualBox image is still in my downloads
directory you might want to move that somewhere else this isn't really a great place to have it
but you can see that this is using about 13 gig of space.Okay so I hope you enjoyed this
video I showed you a whole bunch of options how to get around various issues if you enjoyed this
video please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel I cover a whole bunch of Technologies
on my YouTube channel and show you how to set up Kali Linux in various ways as well as interview
a lot of cyber Security Experts I'm David Bombal and I want to wish you all the very best [Music]