In our previous step we set up FAH on our Stack of NUCs.

Now we are going to disable the service and uninstall it. In the last step there was an optional step to “finish folding”. Bonus points for doing this.

Purpose:

• Demonstrate stopping and removing an installed service workload

From NUC 1, log in to the Ansible control node, NUC 2.

Create the file /home/ansible/my-project/fah/removefah.yml

removefah.yml

---
- hosts: all
  become: true
  become_user: root
  tasks:
    - name: Stop and disable FAHClient.service
      ansible.builtin.service:
        name: FAHClient.service
        state: stopped
        enabled: false
    - name: Remove fahclient package
      apt:
        name: fahclient
        state: absent
        clean: true
        purge: true
    - name: Reboot
      reboot:

ansible-playbook removefah.yml

Now that we have removed the CPU-hungry FAH service, we go next to installing Kubernetes.

Cyber security students may want to deploy hashtopolis in the Lab. This deploys a distributed hashcat cluster for brute forcing password hashes.

References:

• https://jakewnuk.com/posts/hashtopolis-infrastructure/
• https://github.com/peterezzo/hashtopolis-docker

There are two pieces to set up:

• server - central server distributes the keyspace of a task, aggregates jobs, and collects results in MySQL database
  • communicates over HTTPS with client machines
  • passes over files, binaries and task commands
• clients - acts on the commands, executes the hash cracking application, and report “founds” to the server

1. Log in to the Ansible control node (NUC 2)
2. Create directory /home/ansible/my-project/hashtopolis change to it
   • mkdir hashtopolis
   • cd hashtopolis
3. Create the inventory, putting one of the worker nodes in the [server] section and the rest in the [clients] section
   • /home/ansible/my-project/hashtopolis/inventory

   • inventory

     [all:vars]
     ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3
     ansible_user='ansible'
     ansible_become=true
     ansible_become_method=sudo
     [server]
      
     [clients]

4. Create the ansible.cfg file
   • /home/ansible/my-project/hashtopolis/ansible.cfg

   • ansible.cfg

     [defaults]
     inventory = inventory

Server runs a LAMP stack

# installing core packages
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install apache2 -y
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php php-gd php-pear php-curl -y
sudo apt install git -y
sudo apt install phpmyadmin -y
 
# depending on your OS you may find the package listed as either one
sudo apt install mysql-server -y
sudo apt install mariadb -y
 
# secure the default mysql install
mysql_secure_installation
 
# clone down the repo
git clone https://github.com/s3inlc/hashtopolis.git
sudo mkdir /var/www/hashtopolis
sudo cp -r hashtopolis/src/* /var/www/hashtopolis
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/hashtopolis
 
# create mysql database and set a password
sudo mysql -uroot -e "create database hashtopolis;"
sudo mysql -uroot -e "GRANT ALL ON hashtopolis.* TO 'hashtopolis'@'localhost' identified by 'PASSWORD';"
sudo mysql -uroot -e "flush privileges;"

additional configuration required

# ensure the machine is up to date and install python packages
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y full-upgrade -y
pip3 install requests
pip3 install psutil

# install nvidia and cuda drivers
sudo apt install -y nvidia-driver nvidia-cuda-toolkit

# verify install (should both show nvidia drivers)
nvidia-smi
lspci | grep -i vga

# verify with hashcat
hashcat -I

# fetch the agent file from the server
curl http://DOMAIN.TLD/agents.php?download=1 -o agent.zip
python3 agent.zip