Whenever I am approached by someone looking to get into the computer security field, my advice to them is “build yourself a lab”. Anyone interested in pursuing employment in the computer industry must have extensive hands-on experience with both hardware and software to be successful. This is especially true when it comes to IT Security. The old story is that leaders in the early days of the computer industry got started by fiddling with computers in their parent’s basements. The purpose of this talk is to show how to construct a basement on a laptop.