Cybersecurity Blue Team Toolkit

CHAPTER 10Metasploit

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Reconnaissance
• Installation
• Gaining Access
• Metasploitable2
• Vulnerable Web Services

Software is developed to be the solution for a problem. Metasploit Framework was developed by HD Moore in 2003 when he was only 22 years old. Originally written in Perl with a total of 11 exploits, Metasploit Framework was the answer to a problem he was having. He was spending most of his time validating and sanitizing exploit code. I imagine that for someone as brilliant as HD, this was redundant and boring. He knew there must be an easier way. He couldn't get the project he had in mind approved by the organization he worked for, so he decided to develop it in his free time. Today, we use Metasploit Framework as a platform for creating security tools and exploits, and there is a huge open‐source community that supports the effort. In 2009, Rapid7 acquired the project, and HD Moore joined the team as chief security officer.

Now Metasploit Framework is written in Ruby with many, many exploits. In fact, at the time of this publishing, there are more than 3,700. Metasploit Framework is the penetration testing tool of choice of blue teamers and red teamers alike. Blue teamers are the good guys defending the network against malicious intent. Red teamers are the malicious intent. Red teamers are often called penetration testers, and they enjoy proving where there are vulnerabilities that can be exploited. For clarification, red teamers are very ...