HOW TO INSTALL METASPLOIT (on Ubuntu 11.10)

Today I will provide you with a quick tutorial on how you can install Metasploit on your Linux box so you don't have to waste time with Backtrack. Once we are done you should have a working instance of Metasploit installed as a service and a working PostgreSQL database to connect giving you the full availability of all that Metasploit has to offer us. In order to begin we first need to download the latest installer package for our system from the main Metasploit site.

Download available here: http://www.metasploit.com/download/

OK, so before we run our installer we need to first give it executable rights, we do this through use of the “chmod” command. We simple issue the following command which turns this file into and executable file:

COMMAND: chmod +x metasploit-latest-installer-file.run

Once this is done we can simply execute from console to launch the installer

 

You will need to answer a few simple setup questions for the installer to do its thing, I suggest allowing it to install as a Service and leaving the default port unless you have reason to move elsewhere.

Once it is done you will need to navigate in our browser to the login page for the new Web GUI interface. You can find it at: https://localhost:3790/ unless you changed the default port during setup.

 

Once exception is made you will be redirected to the Web GUI login page where you can create a new user account to use with the GUI. 

When you click on Create Account it will ask for product code. Click on the hyperlink above it to request one. You can use http://www.guerrillamail.com/ for a temporary email for signup if you dont want to have any traces or your just plain bonkers paranoid. They will email you a temp product code which you then need to use to load to get the real product code, so you need a working email (why I like GuerrillaMail).

 

Enter temp code to get real code:

Now activate your shit:

 

Yeah, now we legit and have Web GUI installed.

 

Use the administrator panel to update SW so you have all of the latest and greatest available to use.

Once you are updated you can start cooking with the Web GUI if you like. You can create a Project to get started, just give it a name and a few details:

Once project is created you can now define all the scan options and do what you want. This community edition is fairly limited in what it is capable of doing, so mostly just the Discovery tab will be working in full.

You can use a work email to get a product code to try the PRO version for a 1 week trial period if you like. It is basically just point and click hacking though for administrators from companies with money and lack of knowledge on how to operate the underlying framework. Since I know we are all poor let us now go set things up so we can use the more traditional MSFCONSOLE which doesn't have any limitations for us once properly setup. We start by dropping back to console or terminal and navigating to our MSF installation directory “/opt/metasploit-4.x/msf3”.

COMMAND: cd /opt/metasploit-4.x/msf3/

Now we update things real quick once more to make sure our console is fully up to date in addition to the stupid worthless WebGUI. We do this using the builtin MSFUPDATE function. Simply run it from command line with sudo privileges and wait a few minutes for it to do its thing.

COMMAND: sudo msfupdate

Now we start the msfconsole using simple command “sudo msfconsole”

 Now that we are updated we can make sure our database functionality from the bundled PostgreSQL is properly working. This is probably where almost everyone fails when setting things up. The system comes pre-bundled with everything needed, but poor documentation make it hard to figure things out sometimes, mainly how to connect to the dang database. Well today I lift the mystery :)

The database credentials created upon installation are stored in a file in the /config directory within the MSF installation folder. We can use “cat” command to read the file contents to ensure we are using the proper credentials to connect.

COMMAND: sudo cat /opt/metasploit-4.1.4/config/database/yml

Now we can use those credentials to connect to the Metasploit database created at startup without any need to create new users, databases, or anything else :)

You can simply type “HELP” or “?” at the command prompt now and you will find that you now have the full database commands options in addition to the standard options. Moving forward all scans run through the Metasploit console will be stored in our PostgreSQL database for re-use afterwards. This brings us great advantages when working with tools like NMAP and vulnerability scanners like Nessus and Nexspose which can be imported directly into the database or run directly from the msfconsole.

This concludes my introduction to setting up standalone Metasploit instance with working database connections. I will follow up tutorials coming in the next week to outline how we can install Nessus and incorporate into Metasploit as well as how to the same with Nexspose. I hope you enjoyed this short tut and found some piece of it informative. 

Until next time, Enjoy!

SPECIAL NOTE: In the past you used to be able to configure standalone database servers but HD has stopped the official Support for all db_driver options other than PostgreSQL so this is your only real option these days (no more MySQL support). You can install you own separate PostgreSQL instance and use pgadmin3 to manage and give MSF the proper credentials to connect this way but when everything is already bundled there is no need to re-invent the wheel...