Cracking Telnet and SSH passwords

In this recipe, we will try and crack Telnet and SSH passwords.

Cracking Telnet and SSH passwords can be used against systems as well as infrastructures. With this, you have the ability to try and penetrate into switches, firewalls, routers, pretty much any network equipment and most often Linux machines will have this method of access enabled.

Getting ready

Let's ensure the following prerequisites:

• Your Kali machine is powered up
• Your Metasploitable machine is powered up
• Validate the IP address of the Metasploitable machine

How to do it...

We will attempt to crack Telnet and SSH passwords:

1. Let's start by logging into the Metasploitable machine and we will create a couple of users to test against:

cd 
sudo useradd johndoe -p ketchup -m 
sudo useradd janedoe -p mustard -m 
sudo useradd kiddoe -p monkey -m

2. Validate the IP address of the Metasploitable machine—in my case it is 192.168.56.104.

Cracking Telnet passwords with a userlist

In this recipe we will try and crack...