This book is designed to teach you everything from the fundamentals of the Framework to advanced techniques in exploitation. Our goal is to provide a useful tutorial for the beginner and a reference for practitioners. However, we won’t always hold your hand. Programming knowledge is a definite advantage in the penetration testing field, and many of the examples in this book will use either the Ruby or Python programming language. Still, while we suggest that you learn a language like Ruby or Python to aid in advanced exploitation and customization of attacks, programming knowledge is not required.

As you grow more comfortable with Metasploit, you will notice that the Framework is frequently updated with new features, exploits, and attacks. This book was developed with the knowledge that Metasploit is continually changing and that no printed book is likely to be able to keep pace with this rapid development. Therefore, we focus on the fundamentals, because once you understand how Metasploit works you will be able to ramp up quickly with updates to the Framework.