Msfconsole (Metasploit) Cheat Sheet

Metasploit is the standard exploitation framework — a library of exploits, payloads, and post-exploitation modules accessible through one console, msfconsole.

Red Team / Offensive Use

Metasploit's value is speed and consistency: once you've identified a vulnerability (via Nmap version detection, a confirmed CVE, a known misconfiguration), Metasploit often has a maintained, working module for it rather than needing to write or find exploit code yourself. The real skill isn't running exploit — it's understanding what a module actually does before firing it, so you're not surprised by its behavior against a real target, and knowing when a manual approach is more appropriate than reaching for a canned module.

Established Cheatsheet

Metasploit Unleashed — Msfconsole — OffSec's long-standing free course on the framework, still the standard starting reference for msfconsole specifically.

PWNMI's Top 5 Use Cases

• search type:exploit platform:windows smb — search the module database by type, platform, and keyword instead of scrolling blindly
• use exploit/windows/smb/ms17_010_eternalblue — select a module by its full path once you know what you're looking for
• show options — display the required and optional settings for the currently selected module; run this before touching anything else
• set RHOSTS <ip> / set LHOST <ip> — the two settings you'll configure on nearly every module: the target and your listener address
• use auxiliary/scanner/smb/smb_ms17_010 — auxiliary scanner modules confirm a vulnerability exists before you run the actual exploit module against it — always worth doing first when a scanner module is available

Next step

See the TryHackMe Blue walkthrough for exactly this workflow — confirming with a scanner module before exploiting — applied end-to-end against a real target. For what multi/handler is actually doing underneath, and how it fits alongside other C2 frameworks, see Command and Control Fundamentals.