Metasploit Community Edition

When it comes to vulnerability verification, penetration testers often have an array of tools at their disposal. Metasploit Community Edition provides us with a graphical user interface (GUI) that simplifies network discovery and vulnerability verification for specific exploits, increasing the effectiveness of vulnerability scanners such as Nessus, Nexpose, and so forth.

Metasploit Community Edition enables us to:

• Map out our network – Host identification, port scanning and OS fingerprinting.

• Integrate with other vulnerability scanners – Import data from Nessus, NMAP, and other solutions. In addition, Nexpose scans can be initiated from within Metasploit Community Edition.

• Find the right exploit – With the world’s largest quality-assured exploits, finding the right exploit is just seconds away!

• Verify remediation – Do you think your host has been patched against a specific vulnerability? Fire an exploit and find out!

• And the best part? Metasploit Community Edition is provided to the InfoSec Community FREE of charge.

As the name suggests, this is the commercial version of Metasploit and requires a valid license. The difference between Metasploit Community Edition and Metasploit Pro can be best illustrated by the following diagram:

Clearly, Metasploit Pro has additional features such as Social Engineering, Web App Scanning, IDS/IPS evasion, superior reporting capabilities, and so forth.

The activation process is quite simple, so let us walk through it together:

• First, let us access the web interface by going to http://localhost:3790. Disregard the warning about the SSL certificate.

• Enter data in the following required fields: Username* , Password* and Password confirmation*, and then click on ‘Create Account’. Please note that you may need to enable JavaScript on this page.

• Once your account created, you can press the ‘GET PRODUCT KEY’ button. You will be redirected to Rapid7’s web page, where you will be asked to fill out a form in order to receive your product key. Once you receive your key, or if you already have a key, entered it where is says ‘Enter Product Key You’ve Received by Email’, and press ‘ACTIVATE LICENCE’.

• Congratulations!!! You have successfully activated your copy of Metasploit Community Edition.