Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester

Payloads

To understand what a payload does, let's consider a real-world example. A military unit of a certain country develops a new missile that can travel a range of 500 km at very high speed. Now, the missile body itself is of no use unless it's filled with the right kind of ammunition. Now, the military unit decided to load high explosive material within the missile so that when the missile hits the target, the explosive material within the missile explodes and causes the required damage to the enemy. So, in this case, the high explosive material within the missile is the payload. The payload can be changed based on the severity of damage that is to be caused after the missile is fired.

Similarly, payloads in the Metasploit Framework ...