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Activity 2: Perform Vulnerability Assessment
Introduction to Information Security

In this practical activity, you will perform tasks to discover and analyze vulnerabilities in a given network.

30min Easy

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The practical lab activities provided on this website are intended for educational purposes only. The activities are provided "as is" without any warranties, express or implied. The owner of this website shall not be liable for the actions of the users pertaining to perform these activities.
Important! It is illegal to perform any type of intrusion or hacking activities without explicit permission.
Significance: Being able to discover vulnerabilities in your network is typically done as part of a penetration test, and is considered an essential security skill.
Prerequisites: Set Up a Virtual Security Lab
Requirements: Virtual Lab Environment; Nessus
Files: None
Related Videos: Vulnerability Assessment
By completing this task, you will be able to scan a network for active hosts. As part of a penetration test, you can then attempt to discover potential vulnerabilities.
Expert Mode
  1. Use a network scanner (nmap) to discover the IP addresses of your targets
Regular Mode
Task in details »
  1. Start Kali and the two target VMs
  2. Get the IP address of Kali including the network address: ip a
  3. Copy the entire IP address with the /24 from eth0 interface
  4. Scan the network to discover the target's IP using the following command and your own IP address nmap -sn <network address> (e.g., nmap -sn 192.168.135.154/24)
  5. Ping the each of the targets using their IP addresses ping <Target IP Address> (e.g., ping 192.168.135.155)
By completing this task, you will be able to scan network hosts for vulnerabilities. After you discover active hosts on your target network, you would scan those hosts for vulnerabilities. As part of a penetration test, you could then attempt to exploit them.
Automated Vulnerability Scanning is typically used in clear-box pentesting. Tools like Nessus and OpenVAS allow you easily create and run scans. Nessus is a remote security scanning tool, which scans a computer and raises an alert if it discovers any vulnerabilities that malicious hackers could use to gain access to any computer you have connected to a network.
Expert Mode
  1. Use Nessus to scan your Metasploitable 2 for vulnerabilities
Regular Mode
Task in details »
  1. We will use Windows 10 for this activity, so go ahead and log in to your WIN10 VM
  2. Open Google Chrome Web browser. There should be a pre-configured tab with the Nessus scanner homepage
  3. You might see a privacy error/warning. Click the Advanced button and then click the Proceed to localhost (unsafe) link
  4. Log in with the following credentials: samer/password
  5. Close the welcome message dialog
  6. Click the New Scan button (top right corner) and select the Basic Network Scan option
  7. Fill in the required information as follows: Name: First Scan
    Description: CS Academy 2023 (Year)
    Target: <Your Network Address IP>
  8. Click the Save button
  9. Once saved, you will be redirected to the My Scans folder with the recently created scan listed
  10. Locate the Launch button and click it to start the scan
  11. Let the scan run. While the scan is running, you can inspect the results as they are reported. Click the Running icon
  12. Click the IP address of Metasploitable to see its details
  13. Go back to the Hosts (scan results) main page and wait for the scan to be completed. When the scan is complete, explore some of the discovered vulnerabilities
  14. Click the vulnerability category: SSL (Multiple Issues)
  15. Click the first vulnerability to get its details
  16. In the Questions section, you will be asked about specific details, so make sure you know who to locate information in Nessus scan results
  17. Finally, go to the results page and export the results into a PDF
  18. Open the PDF file and view its contents. Show your instructor when done
Name
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Introduction to Information Security