As an ethical hacker, we are defining, classifying, identifying, and mitigating vulnerabilities within a system or organization. These responsibilities are often identified as performing vulnerability analysis and exploitation.

Vulnerability analysis defines and classifies security threats.

Vulnerability exploitation identifies weaknesses and mitigates them within a system or organization.

If done manually, vulnerability analysis and exploitation are long and tedious. Thankfully, due to the advancement of technology, ethical hackers are given tools to perform these tasks efficiently and quickly.

Some of the tools to list are:

• Armitage: A graphical user interface (GUI) tool for the Metasploit project that illustrates targets and offers exploits suggestions.
• Nmap: An open-source tool for network discovery and security auditing.
• Nikto2: An open-source command-line vulnerability scanner for web servers.
• W3AF: An open-source web application scanner.

Now, let’s practice some vulnerability analysis and exploitation!