README.md

Kali bootstrapping script for Amazon Machine Images (AMI)#

Forked from https://github.com/andsens/build-debian-cloud. This script bootstraps a barebones Kali installation to create either an Amazon machine image or a Google Compute Engine image. The image contains no latent logfiles no .bash_history or even the apt package cache.
The machine configuration this script creates has been thoroughly tested.

Setup

• To create an AMI this bootstrapper needs to be run on an Amazon EC2 instance.
• Generate your AWS Access and Secret keys - https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?#security_credential
• Create an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 64 bit default AMI. Log on to this machine and generate your Kali AMI.

$ cd ~
$ sudo apt-get install git debootstrap
$ sudo ln -sf /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts/{wheezy,kali}
$ git clone https://github.com/offensive-security/kali-cloud-build.git 
$ cd kali-cloud-build
$ sudo ./kali-cloud-build ec2 --secret-key xxxxxxxxxxxxx --access-key xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Usage

The script is started with ./kali-cloud-build. For now, you can bootstrap a Kali Linux AMI (./kali-cloud-build ec2) only. To see a list of options use --help. When creating an AMI the script at least needs to know your AWS credentials. There are no interactive prompts, the bootstrapping can run entirely unattended from start till finish.

Some plugins are included in the plugins directory. A list of external plugins is also provided there. If none of those scratch your itch, you can of course write your own plugin.

Features

AMI features

• EBS booted
• Base installation uses only 289MB
• Base installation bootup time ~45s* (from AMI launch to SSH connectivity)
• Support for both ext* and xfs
• Uses a custom Kali kernel with GZ support
• update-grub creates an actual menu.lst which pvGrub can read
• ec2 system log is not cluttered by grub menu
• ec2 startup scripts:
  • ec2-get-credentials: Copies the ec2 keypair to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • ec2-run-user-data: If the userdata starts with #! it will be executed
  • generate-ssh-hostkeys: Generates hostkeys for sshd on first boot
  • expand-volume: Expands the root partition to the volume size

*The bootup time was measured with this script

Bootstrapper (AMI) features

• EBS volume is automatically created, mounted, formatted, unmounted, "snapshotted" and deleted
• AMI is automatically registered with the right kernels for the current region of the host machine
• Currently creates only Kali Linux 64-bit AMIs
• Plugin system to keep the bootstrapping process automated
• The process is divided into simple task based scripts