Open-source security tool Metasploit gets a major update after seven years

• Metasploit is a hot favorite tool among cybersecurity experts and is equally used by attackers.
• It is mainly used in penetration testing and IDS signature development.

Popular security tool Metasploit got a massive update yesterday. Dubbed as Metasploit 5.0, the open-source offering now comes with many improvements such as a new database, an automated API, evasion modules and libraries.

Furthermore, it gets a boost in performance as well as in terms of usability of the tool. After 2011, Metasploit never got any updates or improvements with regard to functionality.

The Framework version (intended for developers) of Metasploit now offers support for two more programming languages apart from Ruby -- Python and Go.

Coming to the other two versions, Metasploit Community and Metasploit Pro, both of them come with automation feature although the latter has many more advanced features.

Metasploit Pro packs a punch in terms of features, and is loaded with plenty of testing options. A few of them include MetaModules, integrations via Remote API, Smart Exploitation, Automated brute forcing, closed-loop vulnerability validation, phishing awareness management, among others.

Emphasis on better development

In their blog, Rapid7, the company behind Metasploit, explains that the software development is segregated two ways.

“For the past year we have split Metasploit development into two branches: a 4.x stable branch that underpins Metasploit Pro and open-source projects like Kali Linux, ParrotSec Linux, and Rapid7’s own open-source Metasploit Framework installer; and an unstable branch where core development is done. If you have checked out Metasploit from Github over the past year, you have probably used the latter, whose default prompt was msf5>,” Rapid7 wrote.

With two branches for development, developers can iterate quickly on the unstable branch to test out new features without affecting the stable branch. Therefore, it is expected that going forward, updates for Metasploit will be released much more regularly.