[ISN] Metasploit Hacking Tool Now Open for Licensing

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=165636

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Senior Editor
Dark Reading 
OCTOBER 9, 2008 

The wildly popular Metasploit hacking tool for the first time is now 
officially open source, open-license technology that can be incorporated 
into commercial tools.

The free research and penetration testing tool historically has had 
restricted, non-commercial licensing so that it could only be used by 
researchers or in-house penetration testers -- not repackaged, 
redistributed, or sold. But in the new version 3.2 -- due later this 
month in its final version -- Metasploit project lead HD Moore and his 
team have transformed Metasploit into an official open source project, 
complete with a BSD 3-Clause license arrangement that allows others to 
sell, rename, or “fork” the code in another direction.

Rich Mogull, founder of Securosis, says this will provide more options 
in the penetration testing market. “Choice increases, and potentially 
the pace of development. But it also means people need to be careful... 
The Metasploit team has done a heck of a good job on quality, which 
isn't guaranteed as people take it in new directions,” Mogull says. 
“Also, we'll likely see commercial products that are just wrappers of a 
system that already has a good UI [user interface]. Some will advance 
the product, but many won't. Me, I'll stick with whatever HD is running 
for now, but we might see some interesting offshoots over time.”

[...]


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