Exploring the msfvenom utility

Earlier, the Metasploit Framework offered two different utilities, namely, msfpayload and msfencode. msfpayload was used to generate a payload in a specified format and msfencode was used to encode and obfuscate the payload using various algorithms. However, the latest version of the Metasploit Framework has combined these utilities into a single utility called msfvenom.

Important Note

msfvenom is a separate utility and doesn't require msfconsole to be running at the same time.

The msfvenom utility can generate a payload as well as encode it in a single command. We shall look at a few commands next:

• List payloads: The msfvenom utility supports all standard Metasploit payloads. We can list all the available payloads using the msfvenom --list payloads command, as in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.4 – Listing payloads in msfvenom

• List encoders: As we discussed earlier, msfvenom is a single...