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How do I deploy a Kali virtual machine in Azure?
How do I deploy a Kali virtual machine in Azure?

Deploying a Kali penetration testing system for 7MinSec to use in your Azure tenancy

Brian Johnson avatar
Written by Brian Johnson
Updated over 12 months ago

For some penetration testing engagements, it might make sense for you to deploy a penetration testing system in your Azure tenancy, rather than have 7 Minute Security ship you a physical device. Below are the steps to create the Kali virtual machine:

  1. Log into your Azure portal at https://azure.microsoft.com.

  2. From the main portal menu, click Virtual Machines:

  3. Click Create > Azure Virtual Machine:


  4. Select and/or fill out the Subscription, Resource Group and Virtual Machine Name. In our example, we selected our default subscription, made a new resource group called 7MS-KALI_group and named the machine 7MS-KALI:

  5. Under Image, click the drop-down box and choose See all images:

  6. Within the marketplace, type in the search Kali, and then from the results, underneath the Kali Linux image, click the drop-down and choose Kali 2023.4 -x64 Gen 2:


  7. Back at the Create a virtual machine screen, select the Size dropdown and choose Standard_DS1_v2 - 1 vcpu, 3.5 GiB memory:

  8. Under the Administrator Account section, choose Password, create a user called sevminsec and then a long/strong/unique password such as one generated with 1Password (7 Minute Security will arrange a secure email thread to send this password through):

  9. Near the bottom of this screen, ensure that under Public inbound ports that Allow selected ports is selected, that SSH is highlighted in the drop-down, and then click Next: Disks >:


  10. Under OS disk, click the drop-down next to OS disk size and choose 64 GiB (P6), then click Next: Networking >:


  11. Under Network interface, ensure the correct Subnet is selected. Then, under NIC network security group, choose Advanced, and under Configure network security group, click the 7MS-KALI-nsg. Then click Next: Management > to continue:

  12. Under the Management tab, leave all defaults and click Next:Monitoring >

  13. Under the Monitoring tab, leave all defaults and click Next: Advanced >

  14. Under the Advanced tab, leave all defaults and click Next: Tags >

  15. Under the Tags tab, leave all defaults and click Next: Review + create >

  16. Under the Review + create tab, double-check the configuration and click Create.

  17. Back at the main Azure portal, search for network and then select Network security groups:

  18. Under Network security groups, click the one assigned to the Kali VM:

  19. From the network security group rule list, locate and click on default-allow-ssh:

  20. Within the default-allow-ssh rule, ensure under Source that IP Addresses is selected, and then under Source IP addresses / CIDR ranges you copy/paste in the IPs/subnets provided by 7 Minute Security (IPs below are just for demonstration purposes), as well as any IPs you will want to connect to the VM from:

    When all the IPs/subnets are configured, click Save at the bottom of this rule:

  21. After a bit of time you should see a notification at the top right of your Azure portal letting you know the VM has been created:

  22. Click Virtual machines from the Azure menu again, and this time you should see your Kali VM listed:

    Please send the IP address (under Public IP address) to 7 Minute Security via the secure email portal provided.

  23. To verify that the Kali VM has outbound Internet connectivity (so that 7 Minute Security can load our testing environment), SSH into the system. Using Mac Terminal:

    ssh [email protected]

  24. One easy way to check oubound Internet connectivity is to issue the sudo apt-get update command:

  25. (Optional) you can finish updating the Kali box by following up with the sudo apt-get upgrade -y command to install all the latest/greatest packages and updates to the system:



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