Build a hacking lab for WordPress with your Raspberry Pi

Turn your Raspberry Pi into a hacking machine with Apache, PHP, and WordPress. Here’s a detailed manual for an easy start to your own WP lab!

If you want to learn more about WordPress, you can easily install a software bundle like LAMP (for Windows) or MAMP (for Mac) on your computer and install as many WordPress installations as you like on it. This way, you can play around, make changes, and go wild without damaging your existing websites or paying money for hosting space.

But what if you want to attack WordPress and test the hardening of a WP website? Or if you want to test the vulnerability that was found in an old version?

If you are the proud owner of a Raspberry Pi, then that’s not a problem.

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how you can build your home lab and hack within your own network without fear of repercussions.

Let’s start with the hardware: Raspberry Pi

Before you start building your home lab, you’ll need to gather all the necessary materials. Here’s a list of what you’ll need:

A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (4GB RAM is recommended)
A microSD card (16GB or larger is recommended)
A power supply for the Raspberry Pi
A keyboard and mouse
A monitor or TV (with HDMI input)
A network cable (or Wi-Fi adapter)
A WordPress installation package

Install the Operating System

The first step in building your home lab is to install the operating system on your Raspberry Pi. I recommend using Raspberry Pi OS, which is the free operating system provided by the Raspberry Foundation, based on Debian Linux. To install Raspberry Pi OS, follow these steps:

Download the Raspberry Pi Imager from the official Raspberry Pi website
Insert your microSD card into your computer and open the Raspberry Pi Imager.
Select Raspberry Pi OS from the list of available operating systems.
Choose your microSD card as the destination for the operating system.
Click “Write” and wait for the process to complete.

Once the operating system is installed on your microSD card, insert the card into your Raspberry Pi and connect your keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Configure Your Raspberry Pi

Now that you have Raspberry Pi OS installed on your Raspberry Pi, it’s time to configure it for use as a server. Follow these steps:

Connect your Raspberry Pi to your network using a network cable or Wi-Fi adapter.
Open the terminal and type “sudo raspi-config” to open the Raspberry Pi Configuration Tool.
Use the arrow keys to navigate to “Interfacing Options” and select “SSH” to enable remote access to your Raspberry Pi.
Navigate to “Advanced Options” and select “Memory Split” to allocate more memory to the GPU (graphics processing unit).
Save your changes and restart your Raspberry Pi.

Install Stack – LAMP

Now that your Raspberry is ready, it’s time to install the LAMP stack.

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, which are the components required to run a web server.

Follow these steps:

Open the terminal and type “sudo apt update” to update your Raspberry Pi’s package list.
Type “sudo apt install apache2” to install the Apache web server.
Type “sudo apt install mysql-server” to install the MySQL database server.
Type “sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql” to install PHP and the required modules.
Type “sudo systemctl restart apache2” to restart the Apache web server.

If you made it this far, congratulations!! If you got stuck (or still are) don’t sweat it; it happens to the best of us. If you can’t solve the problem go back and try again. Learn from the mistakes you make and don’t give up.

If you have everything installed and ready to go, then here we go for the fun part. Install the WordPress version you want to play with and go wild.

Install WordPress

The final step is to install WordPress on your Raspberry Pi. Follow these steps:

Download the latest version of WordPress from the official WordPress website.
Extract the downloaded package and copy it to /var/www/html/ using the following command: “sudo cp -r /path/to/wordpress /var/www/html/“
Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php using the following command: “sudo mv /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php“
Edit the wp-config.php file and enter your database details (database name, username, and password).
Open your web browser and enter your Raspberry Pi’s IP address in the address bar.
Follow the WordPress installation wizard to complete the installation process.

Woohoo :) You’ve done it!

Your home lab is just for your fun and training.

Extra Tip

I use my home lab from time to time also to test the current version of my blog, especially when I make bigger changes or after updating my security plugins. That way, I can see for myself where there could be problems with the security of my website.