If, like me, you are reading books on Penetration Testing, it is highly likely that some of the information is out of date.
In The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing the author arrives at an ‘Exploitation Framework’ called Metasploit. The author uses adjectives such as: Favourite, Quintessential, Powerful, Flexible, Awesomness, Coolest, to describe this tool. It certainly caught my attention, so much so, I went on to purchase Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide
One of the first things we are advised to do with this tool is update it. The technique for this is the ‘msfupdate’ command within the msfconsole. Trouble is, this no longer works. It’s horrible encountering problems at the first hurdle and so I thought I’d share the solution.
I found the solution here and it’s very straightforward.. In Backtrack 5, start msfpro, then pop https://localhost:3790 into your browser and you’ll (eventually) be greeted with a form; fill this in, opt for Metasploit Community Edition and grab yourself a product key. Your browser may give a security warning, ignore this and ‘proceed anyway’.
Update the software and you’re good to go.
You can find a handy troubleshotting guide here.