Last updated at Wed, 30 Aug 2017 02:29:07 GMT

Metasploit 4.9 helps penetration testers evade anti-virus solutions, generate payloads, test network segmentation, and generally increase productivity through updated automation and reporting features. Since version 4.8, Metasploit has added 67 new exploits and 51 auxiliary and post-exploitation modules to both its commercial and open source editions, bringing our total module count up to 1,974. The new version is available immediately.

Generate AV-evading Dynamic Payloads

Malicious attackers use custom payloads to evade anti-virus solutions. Because traditional Metasploit Framework payloads are open source and well known to AV vendors, they are often quarantined by AV solutions when conducting a penetration test, significantly delaying an engagement or even stopping a successful intrusion, giving the organization a false sense of security. Penetration testers must therefore have the ability to evade AV solutions to simulate realistic attacks.

The new Metasploit Pro 4.9 generates Dynamic Payloads that evade detection in more than 90% of cases and has the ability to evade all ten leading anti-virus solutions by creating a unique payload for each engagement that does not demonstrate the typical behavior flagged by heuristic algorithms. Dynamic Payloads significantly increase productivity of a penetration tester by saving many hours of creating custom payloads as well as trial and error to evade detection through encoding and ensure that organizations do not fall prey to a false sense of security.

With Dynamic Payloads, you'll have these advantages:

  • Evade all leading anti-virus vendors: Dynamic Payloads evade the top 10 AV solutions in more than 90% of cases. No AV vendor detects all MSP payload options!
  • More stable sessions: Dynamic Payloads use error corrections to make sessions more stable than regular MSF sessions
  • IPS Evasion through stage encoding: Stager will encode the traffic when downloading the payload, which can help evade IPS

Dynamic payloads are exclusive to Metasploit Pro. To test the new AV evasion, get your free Metasploit Pro trial now.

Free Webcast: Evading Anti-Virus Solutions with Dynamic Payloads in Metasploit Pro

If you would like to learn more about how Dynamic Payloads are used to evade anti-virus solutions, join us on the free webcast "Evading Anti-Virus Solutions with Dynamic Payloads in Metasploit Pro" with Metasploit engineer David Maloney.

Easily generate stand-alone payloads with the Payload Generator

Penetration testers sometimes need a stand-alone payload to install on a machine they have compromised and want to control. Generating stand-alone payloads with msfvenom in Metasploit Framework is very cumbersome even for the most experienced Framework user. The new Payload Generator makes it very easy to generate Classic Payloads for any platform, architecture, stager, stage, encoding and output format.

The Payload Generator with Classic Payloads is available in the free Metasploit Community Edition as well as the commercial editions Metasploit Express and Metasploit Pro. Dynamic Payloads can also be downloaded as stand-alone executables and are exclusive to Metasploit Pro. To test the new payload generator, get your free Metasploit Community license or free Metasploit Pro trial now.

Test whether your network segmentation is operational and effective

Network segmentation is a security best practice that can help contain a breach to one part of the network by act of splitting a computer network into subnetworks, the so-called segments.

While network segmentation is not required by PCI DSS, it is often used to limit the scope the networking falling under PCI compliance. This can drastically limit the effort and cost of PCI compliance.

However, there is plenty of room for error in setting up network segmentation, and many companies learned this the hard way. In an interview with SearchSecurity, Try Leach, CTO of the PCI Security Standards Council said: "In the past, we've seen compromises where organizations thought they were doing the right thing, adequately segmenting off what they deemed to be their CDEs, only to find [the security controls were] never tested appropriately."

As a result, PCI version 3.0 added requirement 11.3.4, that requires that you conduct a penetration test to verify that your network segmentation is operational and effective. You need to be compliant by June 30, 2015.

Metasploit Pro 4.9 adds a new MetaModule for testing whether network segmentation is operational and effective. The MetaModule requires a target server, e.g. on a laptop, in the target network so that Metasploit Pro can test for open ports between the Metasploit Pro instance and the testing server.

This and other MetaModules are exclusive to Metasploit Pro. To test your network segmentation, get the free Metasploit Pro trial now.


Boost your productivity with new and improved Task Chains

Security assessments contain many repetitive and tedious tasks, and long waiting times in between. This is not only frustrating for you as a penetration tester but also increases the cost of engagements to a level where it's not feasible to test on a regular basis.

In a recent survey with more than 2,000 Metasploit users, Metasploit Pro users said that they save 45% of time compared to using Metasploit Framework. With Metasploit Pro 4.9, we're increasing your productivity even further.

Using the new Task Chains' drag & drop interface, you can create custom workflows, either for running on-demand or on a one-time or repeated schedule. For example, you could schedule a network discovery scan, followed by a single pass of MS08-067 exploitation, looting of credentials and screenshots, and an iterative login with known credentials and looting more credentials to come back to an owned network the next morning. Or you could watch it run while focusing on other tasks.

What would you do with the extra time you've gained from added productivity? You could conduct more assessments, focus your efforts on tasks that really require your expertise, clean up your inbox, or just get home earlier in the day.

Task chains are exclusive to Metasploit Pro. To start creating your custom workflows, get the free Metasploit Pro trial now.

This and other MetaModules are exclusive to Metasploit Pro. To test your network segmentation, get the free Metasploit Pro trial now.

Enjoy a more powerful Meterpreter payload

Since the 4.8 release, we have greatly improved Meterpreter's capabilities and reliability. While we were at it, we overhauled the Windows and POSIX Meterpreter development environment to make it easier to set up for researchers and open source contributors.

Exciting new Meterpreter functions include:

  • Monitor clipboards: automatically download contents of the target's clipboard, continously for the life of the session
  • Have a two-way video chat with your victim: have a heart-to-heart with your compromised client system, in real time
  • Query ADSI and WMI: enables hardcore Windows Domain hackers to rifle through Active Directory records
  • Access cleartext credentials: snarf in-memory passwords on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms with improved Mimikatz
  • Impersonate in-memory tokens: with the new and improved Incognito extension

Test your network with 118 new exploits, auxiliary and post-exploitation modules

Metasploit is constantly updating its arsenal of exploits, auxiliary and post-exploitation modules to ensure that you're testing your network against the latest threats. We believe that sharing vulnerabilities and exploits broadly with the community increases security for everyone, which is why we also make all of our modules available in our free editions Metasploit Framework and Metasploit Community.

We're adding new exploits at a rate of 1.2 per day, and here's what we've added since version 4.8:

Exploit modules

Auxiliary and post modules

Please also note the release notes from this release versus the last weekly update.

Get your free Metasploit download or trial on the Rapid7 website now!