Book Image

Metasploit 5.0 for Beginners - Second Edition

By : Sagar Rahalkar
Book Image

Metasploit 5.0 for Beginners - Second Edition

By: Sagar Rahalkar

Overview of this book

Securing an IT environment can be challenging, however, effective penetration testing and threat identification can make all the difference. This book will help you learn how to use the Metasploit Framework optimally for comprehensive penetration testing. Complete with hands-on tutorials and case studies, this updated second edition will teach you the basics of the Metasploit Framework along with its functionalities. You’ll learn how to set up and configure Metasploit on various platforms to create a virtual test environment. Next, you’ll get hands-on with the essential tools. As you progress, you’ll learn how to find weaknesses in the target system and hunt for vulnerabilities using Metasploit and its supporting tools and components. Later, you'll get to grips with web app security scanning, bypassing anti-virus, and post-compromise methods for clearing traces on the target system. The concluding chapters will take you through real-world case studies and scenarios that will help you apply the knowledge you’ve gained to ethically hack into target systems. You’ll also discover the latest security techniques that can be directly applied to scan, test, ethically hack, and secure networks and systems with Metasploit. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to use the Metasploit 5.0 Framework to exploit real-world vulnerabilities.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction and Environment Setup
5
Section 2: Practical Metasploit

Understanding the difference between vulnerability assessments and penetration testing

Vulnerability assessments and penetration testing are two of the most common phrases that are often used interchangeably. However, it is important to understand the difference between the two. To understand the exact difference, let's consider a real-world scenario.

A thief intends to rob a house. To proceed with his robbery plan, he decides to recon his robbery target. He visits the house (that he intends to rob) casually and tries to gauge what security measures are in place. He notices that there is a window at the back of the house that is often open and so it's easy to break in. In our terms, the thief just performed a vulnerability assessment. Now, after a few days, the thief actually goes to the house again and enters through the back window that he had discovered earlier during his recon phase. In this case, the thief performed an actual penetration into his target house with...