The role and demand for red-teaming capabilities are growing, as more exploitable CVEs make their way into criminal hands. Being proactive is no longer a capability that can be reserved for annual tests, but a continuous assessment to determine exposure and even through the validation of an organization's security posture. With this in mind, we are delighted to announce the long awaited availability of Metasploit Pro 5.0.0 – which is not just an update, but a fundamentally new approach to red-teaming, designed with the sole intention of staying ahead of ever-increasingly capable threat actors. 

Amongst the multitude of changes, Metasploit 5.0.0 offers an intuitive testing workflow that removes the ever evolving complexity of testing, as well as a suite of powerful new modules and critical enhancements. This is the version you can't afford to miss. For all the technical details, the granular release notes can be viewed here.

So what’s new?

Intuitive testing workflow

Say goodbye to complexity, as Metasploit Pro has completely overhauled the testing workflow. Updates are highlighted by an intuitive user interface, ensuring that your focus remains on high-value penetration testing and vulnerability validation, not fighting the interface. These changes are the foundation for the future, preserving the core functionality you rely on while enabling even more powerful features down the road.

⠀

Stop guessing and start seeing. The new implementation of Network Topology support provides instant, crystal-clear clarity on hosts that have been compromised, have associated cracked credentials, or captured data. For enterprise environments with vast, complex surfaces, we’ve invested in performance improvements, giving you the power to zoom and pan through hundreds of available hosts with zero lag. This is actionable visualization that transforms data into defense.

⠀

Vulnerability detection improvements

Get the necessary assurance before you click 'run.' Metasploit modules can now register crucial vulnerability detection details as part of running. This means that modules capable of running pre-check detection logic give you the full intelligence picture before you attempt exploitation. This new level of transparency and detail empowers you to make smarter, faster decisions, saving you precious time and minimizing the chance of failed module runs and adverse side effects.

⠀

Advanced workflow improvements

Unleash your inner expert with unprecedented control and efficiency. Advanced users of Metasploit Pro will immediately benefit from multiple UX improvements to the single module run page. Tired of manually configuring options? Users now receive intelligent suggestions for applicable values, including network targets, Kerberos credential cache files, and more –  streamlining ADCS workflows.

⠀

Furthermore, you now have the ability to manually choose and configure individual payloads, giving you the final word on how you exploit targets. Metasploit Pro will continue to default to the most common payload for each exploit.

Plus, new quality-of-life improvements for replaying module runs ensure that verifying remediation and re-exploiting targets is a seamless, one-click process. Gone are the days of reconfiguring an entire module run to change a single option. The old list view has also been updated to include the ability to view the module option details that a module was run with. These capabilities can additionally be leveraged by advanced users who are interacting with Metasploit Pro in a programmatic fashion or through the command line interface to see exactly how Metasploit Pro is running modules.

⠀

Finally, boost your team's collaboration with the new session tagging feature. Sessions can now be tagged to facilitate advanced and coordinated post-exploitation workflows. Team members can apply instant, custom tags to track status and flag arbitrary qualities, which significantly improves coordination and organization across multi-person engagements.

AD CS exploitation

Tackle one of the most critical attack vectors in modern networks: Metasploit continues its relentless investment in modern exploitation techniques with the groundbreaking updates to the AD CS Workflows Metamodule. This powerful new feature is a significant advancement, providing security professionals with an automated, comprehensive approach to identifying and leveraging nine common AD CS vulnerabilities. 

Now we’ve taken it even further, with new support for the latest and most dangerous ESC flaws: ESC9, ESC10, and ESC16. Take back control of your Active Directory environment and neutralize these threats with surgical precision. For detailed configuration instructions and comprehensive feature documentation, visit our AD CS Workflows MetaModule documentation.

⠀

Session tags

In fast-moving operations, context can disappear quickly as new sessions come online and analysts shift between tasks. Session tagging brings clarity back to your workflow by letting you attach meaningful labels to every open session. Instead of relying on IPs or hostnames alone, you can tag sessions with identifiers that matter to your team - such as priority, environment, or role - making it easy to group related systems and instantly recognize high-value targets.

⠀

SAML Single Sign On

Metasploit Pro now incorporates SAML Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication, providing your team with a simple, unified login experience. By connecting to your centralized directory, users can access Metasploit Pro with the same credentials they use for all other major applications. Administrators can easily configure their identity provider (IDP) to enable a passwordless workflow and utilize existing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) services, making access quick, consistent, and part of your standard corporate flow.

These features are available in Metasploit Pro 5.0.0 onwards. We’re also proud to collaborate with our customers, who are often the source of inspiration for product evolution. Ideas for improvements or enhancements can be shared with our Support team to help you refine the idea, then submit it to our Product team on your behalf.

Related viewing

Rapid7 Labs launched a podcast today! Episode 1 of 'Hacktics & Telemetry' is now live on Rapid7's YouTube page. Alongside some expert commentary on emergent threats and an exciting guest spot, the final segment is all about Metasploit Pro 5.0.0. Dive into our official companion blog here, and find the full episode embedded below.

⠀

This blog is for anyone who is interested in finding a good penetration testing company.

The post Finding the Right Penetration Testing Company appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In my journey to explore how I can use artificial intelligence to assist in penetration testing, I experimented with a security-focused chat bot created by Jason Haddix called Arcanum Cyber Security Bot (available on https://chatgpt.com/gpts). Jason engineered this bot to leverage up-to-date technical information related to application security and penetration testing.

The post Augmenting Penetration Testing Methodology with Artificial Intelligence – Part 3: Arcanum Cyber Security Bot appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

A common use case for LLMs is rapid software development. One of the first ways I used AI in my penetration testing methodology was for payload generation.

The post Augmenting Penetration Testing Methodology with Artificial Intelligence – Part 2: Copilot appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Burpference is a Burp Suite plugin that takes requests and responses to and from in-scope web applications and sends them off to an LLM for inference. In the context of artificial intelligence, inference is taking a trained model, providing it with new information, and asking it to analyze this new information based on its training.

The post Augmenting Penetration Testing Methodology with Artificial Intelligence – Part 1: Burpference appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

This webcast originally aired on February 27, 2025. Join us for a very special free one-hour Black Hills Information Security webcast with Corey Ham & Kelli Tarala on why your […]

The post Why Your Org Needs a Penetration Test Program appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In this video, John Strand discusses the complexities and challenges of penetration testing, emphasizing that it goes beyond just finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.

The post 5 Things We Are Going to Continue to Ignore in 2025 appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In this video, Kent Ickler and Jordan Drysdale discuss Attack Tactics 9: Shadow Credentials for Primaries, focusing on a specific technique used in penetration testing services at Black Hills Information Security

The post Attack Tactics 9: Shadow Creds for PrivEsc w/ Kent & Jordan appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In this video, experts delve into the intricacies of desktop application penetration testing methodologies.

The post Intro to Desktop Application Testing Methodology appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In today’s world, security is more important than ever. As organizations increasingly rely on technology to drive business, digital threats are becoming more sophisticated, varied, and difficult to defend against. […]

The post What Is Penetration Testing? appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Tom Smith // At Black Hills Information Security (BHIS), we deal with all manner of clients, public and private. Until a month or two ago, though, we’d never dealt with […]

The post Why Do Car Dealers Need Cybersecurity Services?  appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Jeff Barbi // *Guest Post Background Unless you’re pentesting mobile apps consistently, it’s easy for your methodologies to fall out of date. Each new version of Android brings with it […]

The post Start to Finish: Configuring an Android Phone for Pentesting appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

John Strand // Yet again it is time for another edition of Sacred Cash Cow Tipping! Or, “Why do these endpoint security bypass techniques still work? Why?” The goal of […]

The post Webcast: Sacred Cash Cow Tipping 2019 appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Jordan Drysdale// Physical Pentest Upcoming? Bring a Badgy. While badge reproduction may not be the intended use of this product, if you are a physical tester and you don’t own […]

The post Performing a Physical Pentest? Bring This! appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Brian Fehrman // Privilege escalation is a common goal for threat actors after they have compromised a system. Having elevated permissions can allow for tasks such as: extracting local password-hashes, […]

The post Digging Deeper into Vulnerable Windows Services appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Joff Thyer // If you have been penetration testing a while, you likely have ended up in a Red Team situation or will be engaged in it soon enough. From […]

The post A Morning with Cobalt Strike & Symantec appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Carrie Roberts* // Can you think of a reason why you might want to put a lengthy comment into the properties of an MS Office document? If you can, then […]

The post Hide Payload in MS Office Document Properties appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Lee Kagan* // Deploying an offensive infrastructure for red teams and penetration tests can be repetitive and complicated. One of my roles on our team is to build-out and maintain […]

The post How to Build a C2 Infrastructure with Digital Ocean – Part 1 appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Carrie Roberts // EyeWitness is a handy tool developed by Chris Truncer for grabbing web browser screenshots from a list of URLs. Especially handy for pen-testers is its ability to create […]

The post Web Server Screenshots with a Single Command appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Brian Fehrman // Someone recently posed a question to BHIS about creating C2 channels in environments where heavily restrictive egress filtering is being utilized. Testers at BHIS, and in the […]

The post How to Bypass Web-Proxy Filtering appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..