The document discusses the evolution of cyber weapons and offensive security tools from 1999 to today. It describes how such tools have progressed from being in their infancy to becoming highly sophisticated. A key point is that many military and government contractors now openly use open source tools like Metasploit due to their capabilities, cost effectiveness, and the ability to easily adapt them. The document highlights the features and power of the Metasploit framework, including its modular design, wide range of exploits and payloads, automation capabilities, and use by many organizations for tasks like vulnerability research and penetration testing at scale.

1. Open Source
Cyber Weaponry

2. introduction
Chief Security Founder & Chief
Officer Architect

3. background
Perspective
• 15 years of software development
• 12 years of penetration testing
• Involved in OSS since 1995
• Ex-USAF contractor

4. 1999
Military contracting circa 1999
• Ultra-secretive and ultra-competitive
• Teams furiously reinventing wheels
• Open source was still “sketchy”
• Little code sharing

5. 1999
Security tools circa 1999
• Vulnerability scanning was still edgy
• Penetration testing 100% manual
• Offensive tools in their infancy
• No comprehensive exploit toolkits
• Teams hoarded modified public code

6. 1999
“Cyber Weapons” circa 1999
• Shatter-your-drive-remotely stuff
• Scary words and half-truths
• Focused on DE, EMPs, etc

7. boom

8. today
Military contracting today
• Still ultra-secretive and ultra-competitive
• Still reinventing well-defined wheels
• Offense is becoming acceptable
• More use of open-source code
• Better informed customers

9. today
Security tools today
• Vulnerability scanning is well understood
• Penetration test automation is growing
• Tons of commercial and OSS tools
• Exploit code has been productized
• Wide array of niche tools

10. today
“Cyber Weapons” today
• Term usually reserved for offensive tools
• Tons of contractors working on these
• Similar requirements to commercial
• No longer far from reality

11. cyber weapons
Offensive cyber tools
• Common goals
• Permissions and accountability
• Usable by lightly-trained staff
• Great attack visualization
• Multiple tool integration
• Modular design
• Non-commercial projects exist (NETT)
• Integration with defense is important

12. cyber weapons
Offensive components
• Reconnaissance
• Attack Vectors
• Payloads
• Control
• Data

13. cyber weapons
The “cyber” sniff test
• How portable is the target-facing software?
• How do they add new exploit vectors?
• How much is written in Java?
• How big is their exploit team?
• How big is their payload team?
• How do they handle stealth?
• Who are their security experts?
• Does it work on real networks?
• What targets are supported?
• What OSS does it use?

14. cyber weapons
The Open Source requirement
• Costs scale poorly with commercial deps
• OSS security tools adapt faster
• OSS provides transparency
• OSS tools set a minimum bar

15. cyber weapons
Open Source components
• Nmap for host & service detection
• Snort or Suricata for traffic analysis
• Metasploit for exploits and payloads
• DRADIS for notes and reporting
• Linux, PostgreSQL, Apache
• Ruby, Perl, Python, PHP

16. metasploit
The Metasploit Framework
• Created in the summer of 2003
• An exploit development platform
• Licensed under New BSD
• Popular and gigantic
• Over 450,000 lines of code
• Over 100,000 users/mo
• ~600 exploit modules
• ~200 payloads

17. metasploit architecture
LIBRARIES INTERFACES
TOOLS Rex Console
CLI
MSF Core
RPC
PLUGINS MSF Base GUI
MODULES
Payloads Exploits Encoders Nops Aux

18. metasploit
Lego, for network attacks
• Choose a specific exploit module
• Choose a compatible payload
• Configure options
• Launch!

19. metasploit
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=[ metasploit v3.4.2-dev [core:3.4 api:1.0]
+ -- --=[ 578 exploits - 296 auxiliary
+ -- --=[ 212 payloads - 27 encoders - 8 nops
=[ svn r9949 updated today (2010.08.03)
msf >

20. metasploit
Advantages of a modular design
• Extend framework with proprietary modules
• Use your payloads with our exploits
• Use our payloads with your exploits
• Split work by classification level

21. metasploit
Automation with Metasploit
• Create resource scripts with embedded Ruby
• Create console plugins to add commands
• Create new modules to drive a process
• Call Ruby directly from the console prompt
• Talk to the builtin XMLRPC daemon

22. metasploit
Platform requirements
• Any recent Windows, BSD, or Linux
• Ruby 1.8.7+ (including 1.9.x)
• OpenSSL

23. metasploit
Exploit coverage
• Linux (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC)
• Windows (x86, x64)
• OS X (ARM, PowerPC, x86)
• Solaris (x86, SPARC)
• AIX (PowerPC)
• IRIX (MIPS)
• Java
• PHP

24. metasploit
Payload features
• The Meterpreter (Win32, PHP, Java)
• Encrypted control channels
• Extensible at runtime
• Full OS control
• Scriptable
• Staged and unstaged command shells
• Ruby-based C / ASM compiler
• Post-exploitation scripting

25. metasploit
Additional modules
• Over 200 modules for information gathering
• Scan large networks for data leaks
• Exploit logic bugs for access
• Capture data from clients
• Find new flaws

26. metasploit
Database support
• Automatically store all gathered data
• Track all events (commands, sessions)
• Easily build reports from this data

27. metasploit capabilities
Stealth and evasion
• Exploits and payloads are randomized
• Exploits use custom protocol stacks
• Low-level SMB, HTTP, RPC control
• Timing and fragment evasion
• Payloads never write to the disk
• Limited forensic footprint
• Simple to control

28. metasploit capabilities
Full support for IPv6
• Complete socket support and payloads
• Great for compromising link-local Ips
• Works great with real IPv6 links

29. metasploit capabilities
Infinitely customizable
• Ruby lends to a flexible object model
• Modify any code via loadable plugins
• Override specific libraries

30. metasploit capabilities
Instant remote desktop hijack
• Use the “vncinject” payload with any exploit
• Instantly gain desktop access to the target
• Even on logged-off systems

31. metasploit capabilities

32. metasploit capabilities
Relay attacks through targets
• Use the “meterpreter” payload type
• Launch the exploit, gain a session
• Set a route for the target’s network
• Launch exploits from the first target
• Working with Windows, PHP, Java

33. metasploit capabilities
Dump and pass Windows hashes
• Dump the hashes from a Win32 target
• Use any hash as the SMB password
• Provides “psexec” to other targets
• Uses our custom SMB protocol stack

34. metasploit capabilities
Search for and acquire evidence
• Meterpreter scripts for find & download
• Gather passwords and sensitive docs
• Works for all Meterpreter platforms

35. metasploit capabilities
Interact with targeted users
• Determine whether the user is idle
• Install a hotkey hook inside of Winlogon
• Force lock the user’s desktop
• Read the captured password

36. metasploit express
Metasploit Express
• Commercial product from Rapid7
• Not a fork, but a direct extension
• Built by the same core team
• Pays for OSS development
• Uses the open APIs

38. metasploit examples
Mined the public NTP servers
• Discovered over 21m NTP client systems
• Resulted in a great map of infrastructure
• Identified a potential 20Gbps DDoS risk
• A single Metasploit module + console

39. metasploit examples
Scanned 3.1 billion IPs
• Identifying vulnerable VxWorks devices
• Resulted in a 100+ vendor CERT advisory
• Also, a single Metasploit module
• Took 3 days and $19

40. summary
Cyber is what you make of it
• Most of the parts exist in OSS
• Metasploit is easy to build on
• Free to use, free to extend

41. questions
Questions?
hdm@metasploit.com