The sys admin's daily grind – Metasploitable
Gone to the Dogs

If you mess around with a pen-testing tool on your own network, you might survive the consequences, but chances are you'll take the prize for outstanding recklessness. Charly has some advice: Use Metasploitable, perhaps the most broken Linux ever.
You've probably heard of the Darwin Awards [1]. This hilarious prize goes to people who improve the quality of the human gene pool by removing their own genes in an outstandingly stupid way. Because of this, almost all Darwin Awards are awarded posthumously – the few exceptions are unappetizing and don't make good family reading material [2].
My favorite award went to two gentlemen who took their off-road vehicle onto a frozen lake to indulge in a spot of dynamite fishing. One of the men set fire to an explosive charge and threw it far away. The men were a bit shocked when their dog cleverly retrieved the dangerous stick.
Given this emergency, they pulled out guns to stop the dog, which promptly hid under the SUV for safety. Needless to say, the dynamite detonated, the car sank, and the blast blew away the clever owners. They lost consciousness and were later found frozen to death. Pity about the dog – respect for the forensic scientist who reconstructed the sequence.
Bad luck stories can also be found on the web. Every administrator can probably relate to a tale of pen-testing tools running amok and suddenly shooting down the main production – preferably instigated by a trainee who wanted to see exactly what this or that metasploit could do.
Attacking your own network is really not necessary because there is an adventure playground waiting out there for you to romp around in safely. It goes by the name Metasploitable, and I think the name says it all. The Linux image is available online [3] and can be started in VMware or VirtualBox. After doing this, you have a huge range of vulnerabilities to attack.
Vulnerabilities En Masse
Some vulnerabilities are only of archaeological interest, such as the broken R services rlogin
and rsh
, which older readers will remember. Younger readers may only be familiar with SSH and that, too, is a disaster on Metasploitable – not to mention the weak to non-existent default passwords of all kinds of services.
Another group of vulnerabilities involves trojaned services, of which Metasploitable offers a fair number. They arise when someone hacks the download repository of a popular program and replaces the software with malware or a backdoored version. If you install this version on the server, you can soon look forward to unexpected visitors.
An example is the popular FTP daemon, vsftpd
. It was once replaced with a version that opened a root shell on port 6200 if users logged on with a smiley after the username (Figure 1).

So, if your trainees want to play pen-tester, give them Metasploitable and disconnect them from the LAN switch. They will be so fascinated with the options that they will not have any time at all for dynamite fishing.
Infos
- Darwin Awards: http://darwinawards.com
- "The Thing Ring," a castration story: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2014-05.html
- Metasploitable: http://sourceforge.net/projects/metasploitable/
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
News
-
Deepin 23 Preview Release is Available For Testing
The developers of Deepin have made a preview release of their latest offering available with three exciting new features.
-
The First Point Release For Ubuntu 22.04 is Now Available
Canonical has released the first point upgrade for Jammy Jellyfish which includes important new toolchains and fixes.
-
Kali Linux 2022.3 Released
From the creators of the most popular penetration testing distributions on the planet, comes a new release with some new tools and a community, real-time chat option.
-
The 14" Pinebook Pro Linux Laptop is Shipping
After a considerable delay, the 14" version of the Pinebook Pro laptop is, once again, available for purchase.
-
OpenMandriva Lx ROME Technical Preview Released
OpenMandriva’s rolling release distribution technical preview has been released for testing purposes and adds some of the latest/greatest software into the mix.
-
Linux Mint 21 is Now Available
The latest iteration of Linux Mint, codenamed Vanessa, has been released with a new upgrade tool and other fantastic features.
-
Firefox Adds Long-Anticipated Feature
Firefox 103 has arrived and it now includes a feature users have long awaited…sort of.
-
System76 Refreshes Their Popular Oryx Pro Laptop with a New CPU
The System76 Oryx Pro laptop has been relaunched with a 12th Gen CPU and more powerful graphics options.
-
Elive Has Released a New Beta
The Elive team is proud to announce the latest beta version (3.8.30) of its Enlightenment-centric Linux distribution.
-
Rocky Linux 9 Has Arrived
The latest iteration of Rocky Linux is now available and includes a host of new features and support for new architecture.