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Chapter 3: MetasploitComponents andEnvironmentConfigurationFor any tool that we use to perform a

particular task, it's always helpful to

know that tool inside out. A detailed un-

derstanding of the tool enables us to use

it appropriately, making it perform to the

fullest of its capability. Now that you

have learned some of the absolute basics

of the Metasploit Framework and how to

install it, in this chapter you will learn

how the Metasploit Framework is struc-

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tured and the various components of the

Metasploit ecosystem.

The following topics will be covered in

this chapter:

Anatomy and structure of Metasploit

Metasploit components: auxiliaries, ex-

ploits, encoders, payloads, and post

Getting started with msfconsole and

common commands

Variables in Metasploit

Updating the Metasploit Framework

TechnicalrequirementsThe following software is required:

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Kali Linux

Metasploit Framework

Anatomy and structureof MetasploitThe simplest method to learn the struc-

ture of Metasploit Framework is to

browse and explore through its applica-

tion directory. In Kali Linux, the

Metasploit Framework can be located at

/usr/share/metasploit-framework, as

shown in the following screenshot:

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Figure 3.1 – Metasploit Framework

directory

At a broad level, the Metasploit

Framework structure is as shown in the

following screenshot:

Figure 3.2 – Metasploit Framework

Structure

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We'll be using tools/utilities from each of

these categories as we progress through

the book.

In the next section, we'll have a brief

overview of all the Metasploit

components.

Metasploit componentsand environmentconfigurationThe Metasploit Framework has various

component categories based on their role

in the penetration testing phases. Each of

the component categories has various

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modules and plugins that we can use in

the exploitation process.

The following sections will provide a de-

tailed understanding of what each com-

ponent category is responsible for.

Auxiliaries

You have learned so far that Metasploit is

a complete penetration testing frame-

work and not just a tool. When we call it

a framework, it means that it consists of

many useful tools and utilities. Auxiliary

modules in the Metasploit Framework

are nothing but small pieces of code that

are meant to perform a specific task (in

the scope of our penetration testing life

cycle). For example, you might need to

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perform a simple task of verifying

whether a certificate of a particular

server has expired or not, or you might

want to scan your subnet and check

whether any of the FTP servers allow

anonymous access.

Such tasks can be very easily accom-

plished using the auxiliary modules

present in the Metasploit Framework.

There are more than 1,000 auxiliary

modules spread across 19 categories in

the Metasploit Framework.

The following table shows various cate-

gories of auxiliary modules present in

the Metasploit Framework:

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Don't get overwhelmed with the number

of auxiliary modules present in the

Metasploit Framework. You may not

need to know each and every module in-

dividually. You just need to search for the

right module in the required context and

use it accordingly. We will now see how

to use an auxiliary module.

During the course of this book, we will

use many different auxiliary modules as

and when required; however, let's get

started with a simple example:

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1. Open up a terminal window and start

Metasploit using the msfconsole

command.

2. Select the portscan/tcp auxiliary mod-

ule to perform a port scan against a tar-

get system.

3. Using the show command, list all the pa-

rameters that need to be configured in

order to run this auxiliary module.

4. Using the set RHOSTS command, set the

IP address of our target system.

5. Using the set PORTS command, select

the port range you want to scan on

your target system.

6. Using the run command, execute the

auxiliary module with the parameters

configured earlier.

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You can see the use of all the previously

mentioned commands in the following

screenshot:

Figure 3.3 – Auxiliary TCP Port Scanner

Next, we will be covering payloads.

Payloads

To understand what a payload does, let's

consider a real-world example. A mili-

tary unit of a certain country develops a

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new missile that can travel a range of 500

km at very high speed. Now, the missile is

of no use unless it's armed with the right

kind of ammunition. Now, the military

unit decided to load high explosive mate-

rial within the missile so that when the

missile hits the target, the explosive ma-

terial within the missile explodes and

causes the required damage to the en-

emy. In this case, the high explosive ma-

terial within the missile is the payload.

The payload can be changed based on the

severity of damage that is to be caused by

the missile.

Similarly, payloads in the Metasploit

Framework let us decide what action is

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to be performed on the target system

once the exploit is successful.

Singles: These are sometimes also re-

ferred to as inline or non-staged pay-

loads. Payloads in this category are a

completely self-contained unit of the

exploit and require shellcode, which

means they have everything that is re-

quired to exploit the vulnerability on

the target. The disadvantage of such

payloads is their size. Since they con-

tain the complete exploit and shellcode,

they can be quite bulky at times, ren-

dering them useless in scenarios with

size restrictions.

Stagers: There are certain scenarios

where the size of the payload matters a

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lot. A payload with even a single byte

extra may not function well on the tar-

get system. The stager's payload comes

in handy in such a situation. The

stager's payload simply sets up a con-

nection between the attacking system

and the target system. It doesn't have

the shellcode necessary to exploit the

vulnerability on the target system.

Being very small in size, it fits in well in

many scenarios.

Stages: Once the stager payload has set

up a connection between the attacking

system and the target system, the stages

payloads are then downloaded on the

target system. They contain the re-

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quired shellcode to exploit the vulnera-

bility on the target system.

The following screenshot shows a sample

payload that can be used to obtain a re-

verse TCP shell from a compromised

Windows system:

Figure 3.4 – Reverse TCP Payload

You will be learning how to use various

payloads along with exploits, in the up-

coming chapters.

Exploits

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Exploits are a crucial part of the

Metasploit Framework. An exploit is

nothing but the actual piece of code that

gives the required access to the target

system. There are more than 2,500 ex-

ploits spread across more than 19 cate-

gories based on platform supported by

exploit. Now, you might be thinking that,

out of so many available exploits, which

is the one that needs to be used? The de-

cision to use a particular exploit against a

target can be made only after extensive

enumeration and vulnerability assess-

ment of our target. (Refer to the section

penetration testing life cycle in Chapter 1,

Introduction to Metasploit and Supporting

Tools).

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Proper enumeration and a vulnerability

assessment of the target will give us the

following information based on which

we can choose the correct exploit:

Operating system of the target system

(including exact version and

architecture)

Open ports on the target system

(Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

Services along with versions running

on the target system

Probability of a particular service being

vulnerable

The following table shows the various

categories of exploits available in the

Metasploit Framework:

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In the upcoming chapters, we'll see how

to use an exploit against a vulnerable tar-

get. Now, we will move ahead to under-

stand the use of encoders during

exploitation.

Encoders

In any real-world penetration testing sce-

nario, it's quite possible that our attempt

to attack the target system would be de-

tected by some kind of security software

present on the target system. This may

jeopardize all our efforts to gain access to

the remote system. This is exactly when

encoders come to the rescue. The job of

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the encoders is to obfuscate our exploit

and payload in such a way that, in the

target system, it goes unnoticed by all of

the security systems.

The following table shows the various en-

coder categories available in the

Metasploit Framework:

We'll be looking at encoders in more de-

tail in the upcoming chapters. We'll now

move ahead to understand use of NOPs

during exploitation.

NOPs

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In the context of Assembly Language,

NOP means No Operation instruction.

NOPs can be useful at times while writ-

ing exploits or shellcodes. Adding NOPs

can significantly help in modifying the

payload signatures and thereby avoiding

detection.

The Metasploit Framework comes with

NOPs for various platforms, as shown in

the following table:

We'll see this in more detail in Chapter 6,

Client-Side Attacks with Metasploit, when

we generate custom payloads using

MSFPC.

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We'll now move on to see various mod-

ules for post-exploitation techniques.

Post

The post modules contain various scripts

and utilities that help us to further infil-

trate our target system after a successful

exploitation. Once we successfully exploit

a vulnerability and get into our target

system, post-exploitation modules may

help us in the following ways:

Escalate user privileges

Dump OS credentials

Steal cookies and saved passwords

Get key logs from the target system

Execute PowerShell scripts

Make our access persistent

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The following table shows the various

categories of post modules available in

the Metasploit Framework:

The Metasploit Framework has more

than 250 such post-exploitation utilities

and scripts. We'll be using some of them

when we discuss post-exploitation tech-

niques in more detail in the upcoming

chapters. We'll now move ahead to learn

more about the evasion modules.

Evasion

Most of the payloads and shellcodes that

are generated from the Metasploit

Framework get detected by anti-virus or

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other security software. In order to avoid

detection, the payloads need to be modi-

fied. The latest version of the Metasploit

Framework offers special evasion mod-

ules that will help modify the payloads to

avoid detection.

We'll see more details on the evasion

modules in Chapter 8, Antivirus Evasion

and Anti-Forensics. Now, we will get

started with msfconsole.

Getting started withmsfconsoleNow that we have a basic understanding

of the structure of the Metasploit

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Framework, let's get started with the ba-

sics of msfconsole practically.

msfconsole is nothing but a simple com-

mand-line interface of the Metasploit

Framework. Though msfconsole may ap-

pear a bit complex initially, it is the easi-

est and most flexible way to interact with

the Metasploit Framework. We'll use ms-

fconsole for interacting with the

Metasploit Framework throughout the

course of this book.

Information

Some of the Metasploit editions do offer a

GUI and a web-based interface. However,

from a learning perspective, it's always

recommended to master the command-

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line console of the Metasploit Framework,

which is msfconsole.

Let's look at some of the msfconsole

commands:

The banner command: The banner com-

mand is a very simple command used

to display the Metasploit Framework

banner information. This information

typically includes its version details and

the number of exploits, auxiliaries, pay-

loads, encoders, and NOPs generators

available in the currently installed

version.

Its syntax is msf> banner.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the banner command:

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Figure 3.5 – Metasploit Framework

Banner

The version command: The version

command is used to check the version

of the current Metasploit Framework

installation. You can visit the following

site in order to check the latest version

officially released by Metasploit:

https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-

framework/wiki/Downloads-by-Version.

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Its syntax is msf> version.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the version command:

Figure 3.6 – Metasploit Framework ver-

sion check

The connect command: The connect

command in the Metasploit Framework

gives similar functionality to that of a

puTTY client or Netcat. You can use this

feature for a quick port scan or for port

banner grabbing.

Its syntax is msf> connect <ip:port>.

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The following screenshot shows the use

of the connect command:

Figure 3.7 – Metasploit Framework 'con-

nect' command

The help command: As the name sug-

gests, the help command offers addi-

tional information on the usage of any

of the commands within the Metasploit

Framework.

Its syntax is msf> help.

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The following screenshot shows the use

of the help command:

Figure 3.8 – Metasploit Framework 'help'

command

The route command: The route com-

mand is used to add, view, modify, or

delete the network routes. This is used

for pivoting in advanced scenarios,

which we will cover later in this book.

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Its syntax is msf> route.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the route command:

Figure 3.9 – Metasploit Framework

'route' command

The save command: At times, when

performing a penetration test on a com-

plex target environment, a lot of config-

uration changes are made in the

Metasploit Framework. Now, if the pen-

etration test needs to be resumed again

at a later point of time, it would be re-

ally painful to configure the Metasploit

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Framework again from scratch. The

save command saves all the configura-

tions to a file and it gets loaded upon

the next startup, saving all the reconfig-

uration efforts.

Its syntax is msf>save.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the save command:

Figure 3.10 – Metasploit Framework

'save' command

The sessions command: Once our tar-

get is exploited successfully, we nor-

mally get a shell session on the target

system. If we are working on multiple

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targets simultaneously, then there

might be multiple sessions actively

open at the same time. The Metasploit

Framework allows us to switch be-

tween multiple sessions as and when

required. The sessions command lists

all the currently active sessions estab-

lished with various target systems.

Its syntax is msf>sessions.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the sessions command:

Figure 3.11 – Metasploit Framework 'ses-

sions' command

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The spool command: Just as any appli-

cation has debug logs that help out in

debugging errors, the spool command

prints out all of the output to a user-de-

fined file along with the console. The

output file can later be analyzed if

needed.

Its syntax is msf>spool.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the spool command:

Figure 3.12 – Metasploit Framework

'spool' command

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The show command: The show com-

mand is used to display the available

modules within the Metasploit

Framework or to display additional in-

formation while using a particular

module.

Its syntax is msf> show.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the show command:

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Figure 3.13 – Metasploit Framework

'show' command

The info command: The info com-

mand is used to display details about a

particular module within the

Metasploit Framework. For example,

you might want to view information on

the Meterpreter payload, such as what

the supported architecture is and the

options required in order to execute it:

Its syntax is msf> info.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the info command:

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Figure 3.14 – Metasploit Framework 'info'

command

The irb command: The irb command

invokes the interactive Ruby platform

from within the Metasploit Framework.

The interactive Ruby platform can be

used for creating and invoking custom

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scripts typically during the post-ex-

ploitation phase.

Its syntax is msf>irb.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the irb command:

Figure 3.15 – Metasploit Framework 'irb'

shell

The makerc command: When we use

the Metasploit Framework for pen test-

ing a target, we fire many commands.

At end of the assignment or that partic-

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ular session, we might want to review

the activities we performed through

Metasploit. The makerc command sim-

ply writes out the entire command his-

tory for a particular session to a user-

defined output file.

Its syntax is msf>makerc.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the makerc command:

Figure 3.16 – Metasploit Framework

'makerc' command

The search command: The Metasploit

Framework is a package of many ex-

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ploits and payloads. At times, it can be

quite overwhelming to find the exact

exploit or module. This is when the

search command comes in handy. For

example, if we wish to check what ex-

ploits are available for VLC, then we

could use the search command.

Its syntax is msf>search <string>.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the search command:

Figure 3.17 – Searching for 'VLC' exploits

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It is even possible to search based on au-

thor, Common Vulnerabilities and

Exposures (CVE), date, port, platform,

and so on. Just use the help search com-

mand as shown in the following screen-

shot for more search parameters:

Figure 3.18 – Metasploit Framework help

for 'search' command

We will be now moving ahead to under-

stand the variables in Metasploit.

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Variables in MetasploitFor most exploits that we use within the

Metasploit Framework, we need to set

values to some of the variables. The fol-

lowing are some of the common and

most important variables in the

Metasploit Framework:

Now that we have seen different vari-

ables, let's have a look at some of the

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common commands used for assigning

variable values.

The get command: The get command is

used to retrieve the value contained in

a particular local variable within the

Metasploit Framework. For example,

you might want to view the IP address

of the target system that you have set

for a particular exploit.

Its syntax is msf>get.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the msf> get command:

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Figure 3.19 – Metasploit Framework 'get'

command

The getg command: The getg com-

mand is very similar to the get com-

mand, except it returns the value con-

tained in the global variable.

Its syntax is msf> getg.

The following screenshot shows the use

of the msf> getg command:

Figure 3.20 – Metasploit Framework 'getg'

command

The set and setg commands: The set

command assigns a new value to one of

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the (local) variables (such as RHOST,

RPORT, LHOST, and LPPORT) within the

Metasploit Framework. However, the

set command assigns a value to the

variable that is valid for a limited

session/instance. The setg command

assigns a new value to the (global) vari-

able on a permanent basis, so that it

can be used repeatedly whenever

required.

Its syntax is: msf> set <VARIABLE>

<VALUE>

msf> setg <VARIABLE> <VALUE>

We can see the set and setg commands

in the following screenshot:

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Figure 3.21 – Metasploit Framework 'set'

and 'setg' commands

The unset and unsetg commands: The

unset command simply clears the value

previously stored in a (local) variable

through the set command. The unsetg

command clears the value previously

stored in a (global) variable through the

setg command.

Its syntax is:

msf> unset<VARIABLE>

msf> unsetg <VARIABLE>

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We can see the unset and unsetg com-

mands in the following screenshot:

Figure 3.22 – Metasploit Framework 'un-

set' and 'unsetg' commands

For using most modules within the

Metasploit Framework, remember the

following sequence:

1. Use the use command to select the re-

quired Metasploit module.

2. Use the show options command to list

what all variables that are required in

order to execute the selected module.

3. Use the set command to set the values

for required variables.

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4. Use the run command to execute the

module with the variables configured

earlier.

We'll now move ahead to understand

how Metasploit Framework can be

updated.

Updating theMetasploit FrameworkThe Metasploit Framework is commer-

cially backed by Rapid 7 and has a very

active development community. New vul-

nerabilities are discovered on almost a

daily basis in various systems. For any

such newly discovered vulnerability, it's

quite likely that you'll get a ready-to-use

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exploit in the Metasploit Framework.

However, in order to keep abreast of the

latest vulnerabilities and exploits, it's im-

portant to keep the Metasploit

Framework updated. You will not have to

re-equip the framework consistently (un-

less penetration testing is a part of your

daily work); having said that, you can al-

ways aim to update it on a weekly basis.

The Metasploit Framework offers a sim-

ple utility called msfupdate that connects

to the online repository and fetches the

updates:

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Figure 3.23 – Metasploit Framework

Update

Alternatively, we can also use the apt

update; apt install metasploit-

framework command to update the

Metasploit Framework to the latest ver-

sion available.

Summary

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We started this chapter with a brief over-

view of the anatomy and structure of the

Metasploit Framework including

Auxiliaries, Payloads, Exploits, NOPS,

POST, Encoders and Evasion. We then be-

gan using the msfconsole and the com-

mon commands like help, show, banner,

connect, and so on. We then learnt about

essential variables used in the frame-

work along with how to assign them val-

ues using commands such as set and setg.

We also had a look at how to keep our

Metasploit Framework up to date. In the

next chapter, we'll start using the

Metasploit Framework for performing in-

formation gathering and enumeration on

our target systems.

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ExerciseYou can try the following exercises:

Browse through the directory structure

of the Metasploit Framework.

Try out some of the common console

commands discussed in this chapter.

Update the Metasploit Framework to

the latest available version.

Further readingMore information on the components of

the Metasploit Framework can be found

at https://www.offensive-

security.com/metasploit-

unleashed/metasploit-fundamentals/.

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