Benches

A Bench serves as the vital link for remote testing and attack surface discovery. Use this guide to configure your environment and download your custom firmware.

System Requirements

Creating a Bench

1. Sign-in to vsec.blockharbor.io

2. Navigate to Test on the sidebar menu to enter the VSEC Test application and then select the Benches submenu.

3. Click the Add Bench button to begin the process of creating a Bench.

4. A Add New Bench dialog window will pop-up with options for configuring the Bench. Complete the Required items below.

   Field	Requirement	Description
   Bench Name *	Required	A unique, short descriptor (e.g., Lab-Alpha-01).
   Internet-facing interface (WAN) *	Required	The network interface the Bench uses to reach the internet (e.g., eth0 for Ethernet or wlan0 for Wi-Fi).
   WiFi SSID *	Required	Name of the Wi-Fi network the Bench will connect to.
   WiFi Password *	Required	The security key for the specified Wi-Fi network.
   WiFi Country Code	Optional	Regulatory domain for Wi-Fi frequencies (Default: United States of America (US)).
   Hostname *	Required	The network name for the device (e.g., vsec-pi-01).
   Use DHCP	Optional	When checked, the network automatically assigns an IP address to the Bench.
   Description	Optional	Internal notes or context regarding the purpose of this Bench.
   SSH Key	Optional	Public SSH key (e.g., contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) for passwordless remote access.
   Use generic image and download configuration file only	Optional	Skips building a custom image and downloads only the configuration file. The configuration can then be applied to a generic Bench image, allowing the same base image to be flashed across many Benches for bulk deployments.

5. After filling out the Required items, click the Create button to begin downloading the Bench image; a custom Raspberry Pi image (e.g., vsec_rpi_vci_v1.0.0-name.img). If generic image configuration was selected, a configuration file (vsec_config.txt) will be downloaded instead, see Manual Configuration for how to apply it.

   The Bench image typically takes about 10-15 minutes to download depending on your internet speed.

6. Once the Bench image has downloaded, open Raspberry Pi Imager to begin the flashing process.

   Please ensure a SD Card is plugged in before proceeding.

7. Follow the steps in Raspberry Pi Imager tool to flash the Bench image to a SD Card.

   1. Device: Select your Raspberry Pi model.
   2. OS: Scoll down and click Use custom. When prompted, select the recently downloaded Bench image.
   3. Storage: Select your SD Card and click Write to flash the image.

8. After flashing the image, insert the SD Card into the Raspberry Pi and apply power.

9. Wait approximately 10 minutes for your Bench to initialize its local environment and establish a secure connection to VSEC.

10. Once this process is complete, your device should appear as “Online” in VSEC Test.

Creating Multiple Benches

When deploying many Benches at once, you can flash a single generic image to every SD Card and apply a per-Bench configuration file to each, instead of building a unique image per Bench.

1. Open the Add New Bench dialog and click the Download button next to the Use generic image and download configuration file only checkbox to download the generic Bench image. Flash it to each SD Card using Raspberry Pi Imager (see steps 6-7 in Creating a Bench).
2. For each Bench, open the Add New Bench dialog, fill in the configuration, check the Use generic image and download configuration file only option, and click Create.
3. A configuration file (vsec_config.txt) will be downloaded for that Bench.
4. Apply each configuration file to its corresponding generic-image SD Card. See Manual Configuration for the steps.
5. Insert each SD Card into its Raspberry Pi and apply power; the Bench will appear as “Online” in VSEC Test once it has finished initializing.

Bench Functions