Container Arsenal

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container-arsenal (car) is a collection of docker containers that have been proven to be useful during security assessments and CTFs. Each container is represented by a docker-compose file and its corresponding resources. Additionally, container-arsenal ships a python script that can be used to manage the containers.

container-arsenal.mp4

Installation

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container-arsenal can be build and installed using pip. The following command installs container-arsenal for your current user profile:

[qtc@devbox ~]$ pip3 install --user container-arsenal

You can also build container-arsenal from source by running the following commands:

[qtc@devbox ~]$ git clone https://github.com/qtc-de/container-arsenal
[qtc@devbox ~]$ cd container-arsenal
[qtc@devbox ~]$ python3 setup.py sdist
[qtc@devbox ~]$ pip3 install dist/*

container-arsenal ships an autocompletion script for bash. With the completion-helpers project installed, the completion script is setup automatically during the installation of container-arsenal. You can also install the completion-helpers project later on and copy the completion script to your ~/.bash_completion.d folder manually.

Available Containers

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The following list provides an overview on the currently available containers. Notice that each container folder contains a dedicated README.md where you can find more specific information about the corresponding container. Just click on the links listed below to get more details:

File Transfer Containers

• ftp - vsftpd server configured for authenticated and anonymous access
• tftp - A simple tftp server for UDP based file exchange
• nginx - nginx server with WebDAV enabled. Supports HTTP and HTTPS
• samba - Samba share configured for authenticated and anonymous access
• ssh - SSH server that allows remote port-forwarding and scp

Proxy Containers

• ajp - AJP proxy server to access JSERV ports via HTTP
• h2b - A http-to-binary proxy that allows accessing non-HTTP services using HTTP focused tools

Utils Containers

• mysql - Plain MySQL server with randomly generated password protected user accounts
• neo4j - Plain Neo4j database. Useful for tools like BloodHound
• php - nginx server with PHP enabled. Can be used to quickly test some PHP stuff

Getting and Updating Containers

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container-arsenal provides a prebuild version for all available containers within the repository packages You can pull these images using the following commands:

[qtc@devbox ~]$ car pull ssh          # Just pulls the ssh container
[qtc@devbox ~]$ car pull all          # Pulls all containers

Instead of pulling prebuild containers, you can also build them locally by using the build action:

[qtc@devbox ~]$ car build ssh         # Just builds the ssh container
[qtc@devbox ~]$ car build all         # Builds all containers

Building the containers locally has the advantage that the corresponding software is installed from scratch and associated files and resources are not publicly available, as it is the case for the prebuild containers. Moreover, building locally installs the most recent version of the corresponding software, while prebuild containers use the most recent software version that was available on their build date. Therefore, using locally build containers may be preferred in security critical contexts.

Configuration

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After installing container-arsenal, a configuration file will be placed at ~/.config/car/car.toml. This configuration file contains some global variables and default mappings for the provided containers. The first few lines look like this:

[containers]
  sudo_required = true
  volume_base_path = "~/arsenal"

The [containers] section contains parameters that apply to all available containers. The sudo_required setting determines whether docker commands have to be prefixed with sudo, whereas the volume_base_path specifies the default local directory where docker volumes will be stored.

Apart from global configuration options, the car.toml file also contains container specific options. The following snipped shows the configuration for the samba container:

[containers.samba]
samba_folder = "<@:BASE:@>/samba"
public_folder = "<@:BASE:@>/samba/public"
private_folder = "<@:BASE:@>/samba/private"
smb_port = "445"

This configuration shows, that the samba container runs with two volumes that will be mapped to ~/arsenal/samba/public and ~/arsenal/samba/private. The top level folder ~/arsenal/samba is also included in the configuration file, but will not be mapped into the container.

Acknowledgements

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When creating the containers for this project I searched many different repositories for useful Dockerfiles. Certain parts of the Dockerfiles provided inside this repository are probably very similar to others that can be found on GitHub. I did not wrote down all the references, but if you think that your name should be listed here, feel free to contact me :)

For all others: thank you for working on open source projects <3

Copyright 2022, Tobias Neitzel and the container-arsenal contributors.