Metasploit and Metasploitable 2 installation

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When you need to learn how to swim you need a swimming pool and when you need to learn how to hack you need vulnerable machines to practice on. Metasploitable 2 is that swimming pool that ethical hackers can use to learn about ethical hacking without breaking any laws and regulations or the need to use production networks as a lab. Metasploitable 2 is an intentionally vulnerable Linux machine which can be downloaded and setup as a virtual machine in any hypervisor such as VMware Player and Virtual box. In the Metasploitable 2 tutorial we will be setting up the vulnerable Linux machine in VMware Player. In the upcoming tutorials we will be using the Metasploitable 2 vm to practice on and guide you through the process of hacking it using Metasploit on Kali Linux.

Want to practice on Windows machines as well? Checkout our Metasploitable 3 Installation Tutorial and learn how to install it on Windows 10 an Virtual Box!
Setting up Metasploit on Kali Linux 2016 Rolling
When you’re running the latest version of Kali Linux, currently that is the 2016 rolling edition, you just need to click the Metasploit icon on the dock. This will start the PostrgreSQL service, the Metasploit service and msfconsole automatically. When you launch Metasploit for the first time it will set-up and configure the Metasploit database.


Setting up Metasploit on Kali Linux before 2016 Rolling edition
In order to use Metasploit on any Kali Linux version before 2016.01 Rolling edition you need to do 3 things:

• Start the Kali PostgreSQL service.
• Start the Kali Metasploit service.
• Start the msfconsole.

To start the PostgreSQL service we need to issue the following command in the terminal:

service postgresql start

Then use the following command to start the Metasploit service:

service metasploit start

And the following command to start msfconsole:

msfconsole

Now use the following command to check if there is a database connection:

msf > db_status

If you want to start the PostgreSQL and Metasploit service at boot time you need to edit the update-rc.d by using the following commands:

update-rc.d postgresql enable

update-rc.d metasploit enable

Metasploitable 2 installation and configuration
First we need to download the Metasploitable 2 virtual machine which contains the vulnerable host machine we will be practicing on in the upcoming tutorials. Make sure you have sufficient resources on your host system for installing and running the virtual machine. You need to have at minimum 10 gigabytes of storage space and enough RAM for your host system, the Metasploitable host and Kali linux if you’re running Kali in a VM on the same host. The Metasploitable 2 download is available from Sourceforge using the following link:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/metasploitable/files/Metasploitable2/

After unzipping the downloaded ZIP file you need to open the virtual machine from VMWare Player:

Browse to the folder where you have unzipped the Metasploitable 2 image and add it to your VM list by selecting the .vmx file. The new VM will appear in the list on the left side of the window and is named Metasploitable2-Linux. We do not need to change the Virtual Machine settings so we can start the VM right away by selecting the new VM and click “Play Virtual Machine”:

VMWare played might ask you if you have copied or moved the Virtual Machine, click the copied button to continue. Metasploitable 2 will configure itself and present you with a login screen as following:

Login to the virtual machine by using the following credentials:

Username: msfadmin

Password: msfadmin