Host Tags : About Host Tags

About Host Tags

A host tag is an identifier that lets you easily search for hosts, organize assets, create work queues, and track findings for automatic inclusion in reports.
For example, if you import scan data from multiple sources, such as Nexpose and Qualys, you may need a way to easily identify the hosts that are from Nexpose and the hosts that are from Qualys. As you import the Nexpose data, you can set the option to automatically apply a host tag, like nexpose_host, to every host. The same goes for the Qualys hosts, except you would use a host tag like qualys_host.
There are a couple of ways to create a tag. With the first method, you create the host tag, search through existing hosts, and manually apply the host tags. The second method, mentioned earlier, is automatic tagging. You can only use automatic tagging for new data imports or discovery scans. There is an option that you can select that enables Metasploit Pro to automatically tag hosts as it imports or discovers them.
There is no limit on the number of host tags that you can apply to a host. Therefore, you can apply as many host tags as you need to create the types of search queries that you need.
After you tag the hosts, you can search for a specific host tag, which will return a list of hosts that match the search criteria. In this example, if you search for nexpose_host, you will see a list of the Nexpose hosts that you imported. This is useful if you know that you want to run an exploit against a certain type of host and do not want to spend the time sorting through hosts and manually selecting them from the Hosts page.