CrackMapExec VS Metasploit

Let’s walk through a typical attack against the Administrator account using a popular tool, CrackMapExec.

Attackers like to use crackmapexec to exploit Windows networks and machines. It can achieve various goals like enumerating users, cracking SMB shares, and injecting shellcode into memory.

After gaining a local administrator NTLM password hash using SMB relay attacks, Redbot Security used the “CrackMapExec” tool to pass the local administrator hash to all systems and found multiple systems using the same password:

ntlmrelayx2proxychains aims to connect the tool of the SecureAuthCorps' impacket suite, ntlmrelayx.py (hereafter referred to as "ntlmrelayx"), along with @byt3bl33d3r's tool, CrackMapExec (hereafter referred to as "CME"), over proxychains, developped by haad.

CrackMapExec - Swiss army knife for pentesting networks.

Regarding network shares, I personally tend to use crackmapexec with a list of systems. It won't list the ACLs but it is very good at finding out what a standard domain user could access (if this is what you are after) https://github.com/byt3bl33d3r/CrackMapExec

Metasploit

Metasploit: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework

1-) Learn Hacking on a debian based distro like Kali Linux - I personally started with tools like nikto, camhacker... and then moved to more complex frameworks like metasploit.

I once had to give a presentation about Metasploit, and whether it was ethically correct for the creator to make it free and open-source, available to everyone. And in researching this I realized that there were a lot of parallels between the arguments for or against hacking tools being readily available and the arguments for or against gun control. I'll just list a few quickly:

Metasploit Framework (mentioned earlier)

This phase is where the pen testers practically prove that there exist potential vulnerabilities in the target system. The pen testers do the hacking using an array of technical approaches and social engineering methods to exploit the vulnerabilities. The ethical hackers commonly use Metasploit framework to automatically execute exploitation against the target systems. Moreover, they may install malwares such as rootkit to persistently maintain their foothold and further compromise the target system.