Scanning FTP services

Let us select the module using the use command and check what different options are required by the module for it to work:

We can see we have a number of modules to work with. However, for now, let us use the ftp_version module, as shown in the following screenshot:

To scan the entire network, let's set RHOSTS to 192.168.10.0/24 (0-255) and also increase the number of threads for a speedy operation:

Let's run the module and analyze the output:

We can see we have scanned the entire network and found two hosts running FTP services, which are TP-LINK FTP server and FTP Utility FTP server. So now that we know what services are running on the target, it will be easy for us to find any matching exploit if the version of these FTP services is vulnerable.

We can also see that some lines are displaying the progress of the scan and generating a messy output. We can turn the show progress feature off by setting the value to false for the ShowProgress option, as shown in the following screenshot:

Clearly, we have a better output as shown in the preceding screenshot. However, wait! We never had ShowProgress in the options, right? So where did it magically come from? It would be great if you were to stop at this point and try figuring it out yourself. In case you know that we have the advanced option command that can be invoked by passing show advanced in Metasploit, we can proceed further.

It may be required, during a penetration test, that you need minute details of the test and want a verbose output. Metasploit does offer a verbose feature, which can be set by passing set verbose true in the Metasploit console. Verbose output will generate data similar to the output in the following screenshot:

The module is now printing details such as connection status and much more.