Cyber Attack Management with Armitage

So far, throughout this book, you have learned the various basic and advanced techniques of using Metasploit in all stages of the penetration testing life cycle. We have performed all this using the Metasploit command-line interface msfconsole. Now that we are well familiar with using msfconsole, let's move on to use a graphical interface that will make our penetration testing tasks even easier. In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

• A brief introduction to Armitage
• Firing up the Armitage console
• Scanning and enumeration
• Finding suitable attacks
• Exploiting the target

What is Armitage?

In simple terms, Armitage is nothing but a GUI tool for performing and managing all the tasks that otherwise could have been performed through msfconsole.

Armitage helps visualize the targets, automatically recommends suitable exploits, and exposes the advanced post-exploitation features in the framework.

Remember, Armitage uses Metasploit at its backend; so in order to use Armitage, you need to have a running instance of Metasploit on your system. Armitage not only integrates with Metasploit but also with other tools such as NMAP for advanced port scanning and enumeration.

Armitage comes preinstalled on a default Kali Linux installation.

Starting the Armitage console

Before we actually start the Armitage console, as a prerequisite, first we need to start the postgresql service and the Metasploit service, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once the postgresql and Metasploit services are up and running, we can launch the Armitage console by typing armitage ;on the command shell, as shown in the following screenshot:

Upon the initial startup, the armitage console appears as shown in the following screenshot:

Now that the Armitage console is up and running, let's add hosts we wish to attack. To add new hosts, click on the Hosts ;menu, and then select the Add Hosts ;option. You can either add a single host or multiple hosts per line, as shown in the following screenshot:

Scanning and enumeration

Now that we have added a target host to the Armitage console, we'll perform a quick port scan to see which ports are open here. To perform a port scan, right-click on the host and select the scan ;option, as shown in the following screenshot. This will list down all the open ports on the target system in the bottom pane of the Armitage console:

As we have seen earlier, Armitage is also well-integrated with NMAP. Now, we'll perform an NMAP scan on our target to enumerate services and detect the version of the remote operating system, as shown in the following screenshot. To initiate the NMAP scan, click on the Hosts ;option, select the ;NMAP scan, ;and then select the ;Quick Scan (OS Detect) ;option:

As soon as the NMAP scan is complete, you'll notice the Linux icon on our target host.

Find and launch attacks

In the previous sections, we added a host to the Armitage console and performed a port scan and enumeration on it using NMAP. Now, we know that it's running a Debian-based Linux system. The next step is to find all possible attacks matching our target host. In order to fetch all applicable attacks, select the Attacks ;menu and click on Find Attacks. Now, the Armitage console will query the backend database for all possible matching exploits against the open ports that we found during enumeration earlier, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once the Armitage console finishes querying for possible exploits, you can see the list of applicable exploits by right-clicking on the host and selecting the Attack ;menu. In this case, we'll try to exploit the postgresql vulnerability as shown in the following screenshot:

Upon selecting the attack type...

Summary

In this chapter, you became familiar with using the Armitage tool for cyber attack management using Metasploit at the backend. The Armitage tool can definitely come in handy and save a lot of time while performing penetration tests on multiple targets at a time. In the next and the concluding chapter, we'll learn about further extending the Metasploit Framework by adding custom exploits.

Exercises

Try to explore in detail the various features of Armitage, and use it to compromise any of the target Windows hosts.