Profiling hosts
We will continue to use some advanced functions of nmap to provide us with additional information about a particular host.
Getting ready
Let's ensure the following prerequisites:
- Kali Linux is running and you are logged in as root
- Bring up your other test machines (Metasploitable and Windows)
- Validate network connectivity to the network you plan on scanning
- Internet connectivity
How to do it...
We will now provide more targeted nmap scans against particular hosts to obtain further information about the ports and protocols that are open:
- Open the terminal screen by clicking on the terminal icon on the top-left corner:

- From the main terminal screen, you should be at a Command Prompt of
root@kali:~#
.
Operating systems and service detection
The following command will run an operating system and service discovery of our Metasploitable host:
nmap -A 192.168.56.102
You will notice a considerable amount of information provided in the output. Starting from the bottom you will see that it correctly...