Time dilation is an advanced class, we only get standard nominal density time here

indeed :(

@djsmiley2k did you take a look at this security.stackexchange.com/questions/183/vulnerable-oss ?

Wow, that's one of these legacy questions that wouldn't survive 10 minutes if asked today.

hah that's cool,

I mean most 'attacking' is against windows machine

As a linux user, I generally don't have a windows machine lying around I can just attack like that :/

And I doubt MS are going to go 'here's licences you can use to try and find holes in our product!'

Now I have..... sources, for some legit keys I could borrow, use....

but that doesn't feel right either xD

Also, I'd be nice to have win7, win8, 8.1, 10, to be able to try against all of them

@Arminius I don't know that a consensus has been reached, but it has come up on meta repeatedly. security.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=malware+analysis

@djsmiley2k If you want access to all the OSes, then an MSDN subscription is the best way to go. They aren't cheap though, so unless you have an employer willing to pay for it, it's probably not a viable option unless you're committed to making this more than just a hobby. If you're training seriously, it may be a reasonable expense.

Alternatively, for a more focused option, you could pursue something like the OSCP certification, which comes with lab time and is pre-configured with environments to attack in specific ways.

@Xander I know the many meta discussions (especially this one) but I was wondering why some of these are still very well-received.

E.g., I was the only close-voter on "Strange code running at startup". Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting thread with good answers - but it seems a precise malware analysis request to me.