The Metasploit Project (www.metasploit.com) is seen by many as the de facto standard for executing exploit code against a target machine, and since 2009 has been supported by Rapid7, a company that specializes in vulnerability analysis. Originally created by HD Moore, the Metasploit framework is a Ruby-based toolkit that contains hundreds of working exploits for a variety of platforms. Testers or attackers can include payloads, encoders, and No Operation (NOP) slide generators with an exploit module to solve almost any exploit-related attack. The key to Metasploit's popularity is that it has weaponized complex attacks in a scripted format so that the average user can launch sophisticated attacks in minutes. There is a pro version that you have to pay for, as well as a free version. The pro version comes with some additional abilities, such as exploitation chaining and a pro console, just to name a couple.
The Metasploit framework has many...