The Metasploit Project announced on Tuesday that it had released version 3.0 of the Metasploit Framework, its easy-to-use vulnerability exploitation tool.
The latest version of the software has been rewritten using the Ruby scripting language and comes with 177 exploits, 104 payloads, and modules to perform host discovery, protocol fuzzing, denial-of-service attacks and other tasks, the Metasploit Project said in a statement. The software runs on Linux, Apple’s Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and most versions of BSD.
“Metasploit 3 is an over-engineered, incredibly extensible overhaul of the original framework,” HD Moore, co-founder of the Metasploit Project, said in an interview with SecurityFocus. “The framework has evolved from a simple exploit launcher to a powerful general-purpose security toolkit.”
The software can be used by security professionals and system administrators to perform penetration tests and verify the patch level of computers. While the software can be controlled by an interactive command line, a point-and-click AJAX-based Web interface is also available. The framework also adds the ability to exploit wireless vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel.
The Metasploit Framework can be downloaded
from the Metasploit Project’s Web site.