¿Do you know how to install Metasploitable 3 And what is the purpose of having this virtual machine?
Metasploitable 3 is a pre-configured virtual machine by cybersecurity company Rapid7who is also the creator of the famous framework exploitation for ethical hacking Metasploit. Thus, Metasploitable 3 is a deliberately vulnerable virtual machine, containing software with security flaws that can be exploited with Metasploit programs.
In this post, we will explain the installation process of this virtual machine on a software virtualization such as VMware or VirtualBox. Next, we will teach you how to install Metasploitable 3 in VirtualBox or VMware easily.
How to install Metasploitable 3?
The first thing we will see about how to install Metasploitable 3 in VirtualBox or VMware is that it is not done in the same way as with any other virtual machine image. The ISO image of a Metasploitable 3 machine can weigh several gigabytesso an alternative method is used to create it faster.
The software which you must have in advance to do this installation are:
Preparation
The first steps of how to install Metasploitable 3 in VirtualBox or VMware are based on preparing the software that we just mentioned. The first one we will configure will be Packer. To do this, download its executable from its website, whose link we have put in the previous section.
Now it is necessary add this executable to the system Path to be able to use it from a Windows console. For it:
Open the system file explorer. Right click inside the window. Choose the properties option. Advanced system configuration. Environment Variables. Double click on the variable Path. Click browse and find the Packer executable to add it to the Path.
You can now run Packer from the system console. Now, it is time to install Vagrant, whose link we have also put in the previous section. This program has an installer, so it is much easier to incorporate into the system than Packer.
Nevertheless, To create Metasploitable 3 it is necessary to include the plugin «Vagrant Reolad» in the application as follows:
In a system terminalrun the command:
vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload
Download Metasploitable 3
We have already reached the last step of how to install Metasploitable 3 in VirtualBox or VMware. What follows is to go to the Metasploitable 3 GitHub repository, where we will download the zip file that compresses it.
Once in the system, we will choose a route to decompress it and, from there, we will create the ISO image of the virtual machine, also known as «Metasploitable 3 ISO». For it:
In the path of the unzipped files, press Shift + right click and choose the option to open a PowerShell console. In it, run the following command: packer build –only=vmware-iso .\windows_2008_r2.json Or if you are working on VirtualBox: packer build –only=virtualbox-iso .\windows_2008_r2.json Next, We will create the “Metasploitable 3 ISO” virtual machine using Vagrantfrom a PowerShell console, running the following command: vagrant box add windows_2008_r2_vmware.box –name=metasploitable3 vagrant box add windows_2008_r2_virtualbox.box –name=metasploitable3 And finally, the command: vagrant up
How to learn more?
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