Automated vulnerability scanning
The purest penetration testers will often comment that using an automated vulnerability scanner is cheating, but in some cases, such as penetration testing, with a limited amount of time, vulnerability scanners are critical to gaining a great deal of information about a target network, in a short amount of time. In Chapter 1, Beginning with Kali Linux, we discussed how to install additional tools into Kali Linux. One such tool was the vulnerability scanner, Nessus. In regards to vulnerability assessment tools, Nessus is a great addition to your tool set.
Nessus
As previously stated, we have addressed installing Nessus in a previous section, so in this chapter we will focus on configuring and executing a vulnerability scan against two targets; a Windows XP workstation and the vulnerable Metasploitable Linux Distribution. From those, you can gain a good understanding of how to use the tool.
To configure a vulnerability scan:
Navigate to
https://localhost:8834...
