Metasploit

What is Metasploit?

• Offensive security automation tool
• fully open source
• tries to guarantee reliability and trustworthiness of exploits
• roughly the same age as Aaron and Max
• targeted towards red teamers/pentesters

Pitfalls

• Limited real-world utility
• bad reputation due to abuse by script kiddies
• mostly written in Ruby
• it can be quite slow

How it can be useful

• As part of pentests that are fully automated
• when used with automation tools such as Pymetasploit3
• particularly useful for remote code execution attacks that are widely exploitable

How it works

• A git repo full of Python/Ruby scripts that are organised into folders
• set a couple of options interactively and then run it

Prerequisite: “The Terminal”

• NOT scary
• NOT complicated
• NOT all the same

Like a website, you can navigate between terminal prompts

Demo

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ansible@debian:/session$ exit
logout
Connection to 192.168.0.4 closed.
iron ~/f/lancs/luhack/chonk-deploy master! > sh
$ bash
iron ~/f/lancs/luhack/chonk-deploy master! > node
Welcome to Node.js v20.11.1.
Type ".help" for more information.
>
iron ~/f/lancs/luhack/chonk-deploy master! > python
Python 3.11.2 (main, Nov 30 2024, 21:22:50) [GCC 12.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
iron ~/f/lancs/luhack/chonk-deploy master! > sh
$ ssh ansible@chonk
Last login: Fri Feb  7 12:35:06 GMT 2025 from 100.84.145.21 on pts/0
ansible@luhack-big-chonk:~$ ^C
ansible@luhack-big-chonk:~$
logout
Connection to chonk closed.
$
iron ~/f/lancs/luhack/chonk-deploy master! >

Examples of prompts

• Bash
• Powershell
• Python IDLE
• CMD

Metasploit commands

There are many, but the commands that you will probably need today are:

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$ msfconsole
$ msfvenom

msfconsole

The main Metasploit console

msfvenom

A tool for generating payloads.

Meterpreter

A payload that is used to control a compromised system.

AKA a fancy bash shell

Example usage

Finding exploits

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msf > search foo

Running an exploit

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msf > use exploit/linux/http/ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805
msf exploit(ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805) > exploit

Payloads

• Single - A payload that connects back to the attacker and executes in one step.
• Stage - A smaller payload that sets up a connection and downloads a larger payload (the stager).
• Stager - The initial part of a multi-stage payload that establishes a communication channel before the main payload is delivered.

Summary

Metasploit is a useful tool for learning how to exploit vulnerable machines and for doing automated pen tests.

luhack.uk/w14