18 Oct 2022

Build Kali Docker on M1 Mac

2 minutes | 297 words

Background:

I personally use M1 Macbook. It’s pretty tricky to install VMs on it. So why don’t we just use docker?

Download Docker Desktop for m1.
In terminal, download and run Kali docker image:

docker run -it kalilinux/kali-rolling /bin/bash
In Kali shell, update and download essential tools:

apt-get update & apt install kali-linux-default
Install RDP and XFCE:

apt-get install kali-desktop-xfce xrdp
Add a user:

adduser test
Give it sudo priv:

usermod -aG sudo test
Exit from kali, use container id to commit to a new image(so you don’t have to repeat the above steps):

docker commit xxxxxxxx kali:v1
Now, we need to know container is completely isolated from localhost unless you make it open a port:

docker run -it -p 3389:3389 --expose=3389 kali

Back to kali, start rdp:

sudo service xrdp start. You can also use status, stop, or restart to control this process.
Some RDP software only support ipv4. So we change it to ipv4: sudo nano /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini and then change port=3389 to port=tcp://:3389.
Exit Kali, download Microsoft Remote Desktop. Yes, it can also be used to access Windows remote machines.
Type in 127.0.0.1 and you should connect to the kali.

When we restart the container after we stopped it, xrdp won’t work.
We need to manually remove old processes and start it:

sudo rm /var/run/xrdp/xrdp* & sudo service xrdp start.
So I put it into a bash script.

#!/bin/bash

sudo rm /var/run/xrdp/xrdp*
sudo service xrdp start

It’s faster than vm and super easy to rebuild.

You can always use ps aux to check running processes and netstat -ant for opening ports.

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