Faced a lot of issues when I was trying to harden Metasploitable-2. One of the things that I learned was ‘how to SSH into a VirtualBox host’. The Metasploitable cli is not upto the mark :(.

Below are the steps which worked for me. Thanks Google :).

Go into VirtualBox.
Select your Host and click on “Settings”

Click on Network –> Click on Advanced –> Click on Port Forwarding and then add the SSH entry as shown below.

Got into VM CLI and install SSH Server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Click OK and Save your settings. Reboot your VM.
Install Putty client and connect as shown below:

Use your id/pwd when prompted.

Hope the steps are clear.