To connect to the Kali machine, all we need is an SSH client. Most Unix, Linux, and macOS operating systems already have an SSH client installed; however, if you are using Windows to connect to the Kali Linux machine, you will need to install a client such as PuTTY, which is one of the most popular and free SSH clients for Windows.
- To connect to the Kali Linux virtual machine, you need to know its IP address. To find the IP address, log in to the virtual machine, open a Terminal window, and enter the
ip address
command, orip a
for short:
root@kali:~# ip a 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000 link/ether 00:0c:29:b6:03:93 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 192.168.216.5/24 brd 192.168.216255 scope global eth0 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:feb6:393/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
Note down the IP address of the second interface, in this example 192.168.216.5
.
- Now, use the SSH client on the host operating system. Enter the username
root
followed by the@
symbol and the IP address of the Kali Linux virtual machine,192.168.216.5
:
In this SSH session, we can now interact with the Kali Linux virtual machine using the SSH client.