‫And now, if I'm reading your mind correctly, I'm hearing that, boy, wouldn't it be better if we
‫could go faster?
‫And yes, you're right.
‫Automation is a key factor to speed up the penetration tests, but first, let's learn more about the
‫exploitation frameworks.
‫In a previous lecture, we found the exploit code and exploited the target system manually.
‫So let's list the difficulties of running the exploit code manually.
‫You have to manually find out the appropriate exploit code.
‫In most cases, there will be more than one exploit code for a vulnerability, and you've got to choose
‫the ideal one.
‫You have to compile the exploit code with a right compiler and fix the compilation errors and bugs yourself.
‫In most cases, you have to find the operating system and its version to apply the correct exploit.
‫Exploit code may not be stable and may cause some denial of services.
‫You remember our manual exploitation experience.
‫The target system was inadvertently shut down after the exploitation.
‫All the white codes run with a single payload.
‫Dynamic payload usage is not possible to be able to use another payload, you have to change the exploit
‫code, change the payload, recompile the code and exploit the target system again.
‫So to get rid of all these difficulties, the exploit frameworks come in to help now with these tools,
‫you don't need to find and compile the appropriate exploit codes and you can dynamically use different
‫payloads with an exploit, etc..
‫So what are the exploit frameworks?
‫Good question.
‫One vulnerability is oftentimes the only necessary piece needed to gain a foothold in an environment
‫as an example network could be compromised due to a vulnerability found in out-of-date office productivity
‫software PDF viewer or even a browser exploitation framework.
‫Tools contain capabilities to detect and exploit these particular vulnerabilities.
‫The vendors of these software packages are continually adding exploits to their platform, internal
‫security teams and malicious actors alike can use the same tools to detect and exploit vulnerabilities
‫as some of the software exploitation tools are free, the bar of entry is minimal and can open up organizations
‫to easy to perform attacks.
‫So let's see a few examples of these exploit framework's.
‫Core impact isn't cheap.
‫Be prepared to spend at least thirty thousand dollars, but it is widely considered to be the most powerful
‫exploitation tool available.
‫It supports a large, regularly updated database of professional XPoint and can do any tricks like exploiting
‫one machine and then establishing an encrypted tunnel through that machine to reach and exploit other
‫boxes.
‫Canvas is a commercial vulnerability exploitation tool from David Telx Immunity PSEC.
‫It includes more than 370 exploits and is less expensive than core impact or the commercial versions
‫of motorsport.
‫It comes with full source code and occasionally even includes zero day exploits.
‫Now, throughout this course, we're going to use Métis Boit framework.
‫So let's get started.