Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester

Scanning networks and host management

Armitage has a separate tab named Hosts to manage and scan hosts. We can import hosts to Armitage via file by clicking on Import Host from the Hosts tab or we can manually add a host by clicking on the Add Host option from the Hosts tab.

Armitage also provides options to scan for hosts. These scans are of two types: Nmap scan and MSF scan MSF scan makes use of various port and service-scanning modules in Metasploit, whereas the Nmap scan makes use of the popular port scanner tool Network Mapper (Nmap).

Let's scan the network by selecting the MSF scan option from the Hosts tab. However, upon clicking MSFscan, Armitage will display a pop up that asks for the target range, as shown in the following screenshot: ...