Day 31 - Continuing the Journey
Hit a major breakthrough today while working on my DVWA Vulnerability Scan & Exploit Lab.
I finally figured out why OpenVAS wasn’t working correctly; the issue was tied to the NVT feed sync status. Scan configurations are populated from the feed, so if the sync isn’t complete (or still refreshing), key options like the scan config dropdown remain greyed out.
To fix it, I restarted the gvmd daemon and monitored the sync process using logs (/var/log/gvm/gvmd.log) until it fully completed. It took a while, likely due to limited system resources, but once done, everything worked as expected.
I successfully created a new scan targeting DVWA, ran it, and moved to exploitation. Using Metasploit, I leveraged a command injection vulnerability to establish a reverse shell and gain an interactive session.
This was a full cycle moment:
troubleshooting, scanning, exploitation, access
Lesson: sometimes the biggest blocker isn’t the attack, it’s understanding how your tools actually work under the hood.
#Cybersecurity #Pentesting #OpenVAS #Metasploit #LearningInPublic #Consistency