Kali Linux Intrusion and Exploitation Cookbook

Using nmap for manual vulnerability assessment

By now it is evident that nmap plays a very important role right from IP discovery. Nmap also has a vulnerability assessment functionality, which is achieved via the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE). It allows the user to run vulnerability detection scripts. The NSE contains a very large set of scripts that range right from discovery to exploitation. These scripts are available in the nmap folder, and are segregated by their categories. These categories can be better understood by reading the scripts.db file, located in the nmap folder. However, in this chapter we will limit ourselves to vulnerability detection.

Getting ready

In order to begin this chapter, we will be using nmap to check the NSE scripts ...