Banner grabbing with Netcat
Netcat is a multipurpose networking tool that can be used to perform multiple information gathering and scanning tasks with Kali Linux. This specific recipe will demonstrate how to use Netcat to acquire service banners in order to identify the services associated with open ports on a target system.
Getting ready
To use Netcat to gather service banners, you will need to have a remote system running network services that discloses information when a client device connects to them. In the examples provided, an instance of Metasploitable2 is used to perform this task. For more information on setting up Metasploitable2, please refer to the Installing Metasploitable2 recipe in Chapter 1, Getting Started.
How to do it…
To use Netcat to grab service banners, one must establish a socket connection to the intended port on the remote system. To quickly understand the usage of Netcat and how it can be used for this purpose, one can call upon the usage output. This can be done...