There are many reasons why you might want to try out your ‘hacking’ or penetration-testing skills. These range from a simple proof-of-concept as to why systems should be locked down to more aggressive hacking to prove the vulnerability of parts of a system. There are, likewise, many ways of setting up a system to be vulnerable – but you really don’t want to do this to your family’s precious PC or Mac. Enter the Raspberry Pi: it’s cheap, it’s easy to re-image the SD card and now, thanks to security expert Re4son, it’s simple to set it up as a target. On his website, Re4son provides pre-configured images to prove vulnerability – one of these, “Damn Vulnerable Raspberry Pi” is simple to download, install and switch to ‘vulnerable’ mode. Take a look on his website for the image and test your white hat hacking skills safely.

Please note: this is for experimental purposes only – it’s not an excuse to do it ‘for real’!