A basic vulnerability scanning with Nessus

We will perform some basic vulnerability scans against our network to see if they have any known issues or weaknesses with Nessus.

Getting ready

Let's ensure the following prerequisites:

• Kali Linux is running and you are logged in as root
• Start the Metasploitable virtual machine
• Ensure you have completed the setup of Nessus, Nessus is started, and you are at the main screen after logging in

How to do it...

We will now perform our vulnerability scan using Nessus:

1. Although we already have our targets from previous exercises, we will perform a basic host discovery to start. Select New Scan:

2. From the Scanner Templates screen, select Host Discovery.
3. In the Name field, add a descriptive name and specify your targets. In this case, we are going to specify our test network of 192.168.56.0/24 and select Save:

Nessus - host discovery screen

4. From the My Scans screen, select the newly created scan and press the launch button on the right. The scan will take a couple...