Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide

Chapter 5Vulnerability Assessment

Now that we have information on open ports, services, service version, and operating system of our target host/network, we will look for its potential vulnerabilities (weaknesses) in order to get one step closer into compromising our target (dealt with in the next chapter).

Nessus vulnerability scanner would be the prime focus of this chapter as it is one of the oldest and best vulnerability scanners in the market. We will also see its integration with Metasploit and how Nessus could be used within Metasploit to perform vulnerability assessment more effectively. Apart from that, we will also take a look at another vulnerability scanner “OpenVAS,” which is not as powerful as nessus, but is worth mentioning.