While Nmap's primary strength lies in performing fast, scalable port scans, and Nessus's forte is conducting in-depth vulnerability scans and misconfiguration detection checks, Metasploit excels in actually exploiting vulnerabilities on a one-off basis. In a security assessment, Metasploit is generally brought to the table as a last step: once the vulnerabilities are enumerated from other tools, Metasploit can actually exploit them. Sensitive data, compromised machines, and more, can easily be exfiltrated using Metasploit and a variety of tools that come packaged with the framework.

Metasploit can easily have a whole book dedicated to its usage—and, in fact, it does—but we'll go over the basic scanning and exploitation techniques so that you can implement it into your everyday processes, without too much of a hassle.

The easiest way to launch a scan for a particular vulnerability (or information gathering technique) is simply to use it. The way to specify a use command...