The MSF is an open-source tool, which provides a framework for security researchers to develop exploits, payloads, payload encoders, and tools for reconnaissance and other security testing purposes.Although, it initially STARTED off as a collection of exploits and provided the ability for large chunks of code to be re-USED across different exploits, in its current form it provides extensive capabilities for the design and development of reconnaissance, exploitation, and post-exploitation security tools.

The MSF was originally WRITTEN in the Perl scripting language and included various components written in C, assembler, and Python.The PROJECT core was dual-licensed under the GPLv2 and Perl Artistic Licenses, allowing it to be used in both open-source and commercial projects. However, the 3.0 version of the product is now completely re-written in Ruby and comes with a wide variety of APIs. It is also now licensed under the MSF License, which is closer to a commercial software End User License Agreement (EULA) than a standard open-source license.The basic intent is to:

• Allow the MSF to remain open-source, free to use, and free to distribute.
• Allow module and plugin developers to choose their own licensing terms.
• Prevent the MSF from being sold in any form or bundled with a commercial product (software, appliance, or otherwise).
• Ensure that any patches made to the MSF by a third party are made available to all users.
• Provide legal support and indemnification for MSF contributors.

The MSF competes directly with commercial products such as Immunity’s CANVAS and Core Security Technology’s IMPACT. However, there is a major difference between the MSF and these commercial products in terms of its objectives.The commercial products come with user-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and extensive reporting capabilities in addition to the exploit modules, whereas the MSF is first and foremost a platform to develop new exploits, payloads, encoders, No Operator (NOP) generators, and reconnaissance tools. Moreover, it is also a platform to design tools and utilities that enable security research and the development of new security testing techniques.

The MSF is an open-source tool, which provides a framework for security researchers to develop exploits, payloads, payload encoders, and tools for reconnaissance and other security testing purposes.Although, it initially started off as a collection of exploits and provided the ability for large chunks of code to be re-used across different exploits, in its current form it provides extensive capabilities for the design and development of reconnaissance, exploitation, and post-exploitation security tools.

The MSF was originally written in the Perl scripting language and included various components written in C, assembler, and Python.The project core was dual-licensed under the GPLv2 and Perl Artistic Licenses, allowing it to be used in both open-source and commercial projects. However, the 3.0 version of the product is now completely re-written in Ruby and comes with a wide variety of APIs. It is also now licensed under the MSF License, which is closer to a commercial software End User License Agreement (EULA) than a standard open-source license.The basic intent is to:

The MSF competes directly with commercial products such as Immunity’s CANVAS and Core Security Technology’s IMPACT. However, there is a major difference between the MSF and these commercial products in terms of its objectives.The commercial products come with user-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and extensive reporting capabilities in addition to the exploit modules, whereas the MSF is first and foremost a platform to develop new exploits, payloads, encoders, No Operator (NOP) generators, and reconnaissance tools. Moreover, it is also a platform to design tools and utilities that enable security research and the development of new security testing techniques.