Jay Turla of the Infosec Institute introduces us to a bunch of free tools, utilities, and resources to set up a lab where we can practice our penetration testing and elite haxxor skills:

You don’t need to pay a single penny in setting up a pentesting lab because there are a lot of vulnerable distros and web applications that are open source, free and easy to customize. All you need is virtualization software and virtual images in order to run a vulnerable lab.

Good stuff via InfoSec Resources – Noobz Guide for Setting Up a Vulnerable Lab for Pentesting.