How to create a penetration test lab in your PC...

Hello friends, as we have already started some tutorials regarding SQL Injection and later also my plan is to give several tutorials related to Application penetration testing so definitely we require some vulnerable applications for practicing. So, as an ethical hacker we should not do any kind of testing on any live application, therefor Security Professionals created some labs with many Vulnerable web apps. So if you're learner or beginner in Hacking, then I'll strongly recommend you to create this lab.

So for my practicing purposes i am using two labs DVWA and OWASP pen testing lab. 

 # What is DVWA ? (Damn Vulnerable Web App)

Damn Vulnerable Web App (DVWA) is a PHP/MySQL web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goals are to be an aid for security professionals to test their skills and tools in a legal environment, help web developers better understand the processes of securing web applications and aid teachers/students to teach/learn web application security in a class room environment. 

 # What is OWASP Penetration Testing Lab

 OWASP Penentration testing lab in also called as Top 10 Vulnerability Assessment and Practice. Basically it is created for Pen-testers and to learn about Vulnerability and Advanced Web Application Vulnerabilities components.

 # How to Install DVWA on Windows Platform

Installing DVWA on Windows platform is very easy just follow the steps given below.

• Download DVWA (Damn Vulnerable Web App) and  OWASP Pen-test lab files
• Download XAMPP server for Windows.     
• Install Xampp server on Windows     
• Extract all files from DVWA and OWASP pen test lab file to desktop.
• After all, go to C:\xampp\htdocs and delete all files from that folder and make it Empty.    
• Copy entire folder "DVWA" to "C:\xampp\htdocs".
• You can also copy mutilliade, i.e. OWASP pen test lab file to the same directory "C:\xampp\htdocs"     
• Now Start XAMPP Control Panel - Start [Apache] and [MySQL]
• Now just open your browser and type 127.0.0.1 and Hit Enter, now you can chose which application you want to run, Click on the folder and start running.