Penetration testing an unknown network

Recalling the basics of Metasploit, we are all set to perform our first penetration test with Metasploit. We will test an IP address here and try to find relevant information about the target IP and will try to break deeper into the network as much as we can. We will follow all the required phases of a penetration test here, which we discussed in the earlier part of this chapter.

Assumptions

Considering a black box penetration test on an unknown network, we can assume that we are done with the preinteractions phase. We are going to test a single IP address in the scope of the test, with zero knowledge of the technologies running on the target. We are performing the test with Kali Linux, a popular security-based Linux distribution, which comes with tons of preinstalled security tools.

Note

For the sake for learning, we are using two instances of Metasploitable 2 and a single instance of Windows Server 2012 in the demo.

Gathering intelligence

As discussed earlier...