MSFConsole is one of the most efficient, powerful, and all-in-one centralized frontend interfaces for penetration testers to make the best use of the exploitation framework. To access msfconsole, navigate to Applications | Exploitation Tools | Metasploit or use the terminal to execute the following command:
# msfconsole
You will be dropped into an interactive console interface. To learn about all the available commands, you can type the following command:
msf> help
This will display two sets of commands; one set will be widely used across the framework, and the other will be specific to the database backend where the assessment parameters and results are stored. Instructions about other usage options can be retrieved through the use of -h, following the core command.
Let us examine the use of the show command as follows:
msf> show -h [*] Valid parameters for the "show" command are: all, encoders, nops, exploits, payloads, auxiliary, plugins, options [*] Additional module-specific parameters are: advanced, evasion, targets, actions
This command is typically used to display the available modules of a given type or all of the modules. The most frequently used commands could be any of the following:
We have compiled a short list of the most valuable commands in the following table; you can practice each one of them with the Metasploit console. The italicized terms next to the commands will need to be provided by you:
We will demonstrate the practical use of some of these commands in the upcoming sections. It is important for you to understand their basic use with different sets of modules within the framework.