Setting up a test environment

Developing your test environment requires virtual machine examples of all of the Windows operating systems you are testing against. For instance, an application developer might be running very old browser/OS test machines, to see what breaks for customers running antique hardware. In this example, we are running Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10. We are using Oracle VirtualBox for desktop virtualization, but if you are more comfortable using VMWare, then use that instead. It is important to use machines that you can isolate from the main network, just in case the malware acts as it should, and attempts to infect the surrounding machines.

Creating your victim machine(s)

If you already have Windows VMs set up for some other purpose, you can either clone them (probably safest) or run from a snapshot (fastest to set up). These machines should not be able to access the main network, after you have built them, and you should probably set them up only to communicate...