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MSFcli
Another interface in the Metasploit Framework is the “MSFcli” interface, though it’s not interac-
tive like msfconsole. An advantage in MSFcli is that we can redirect output from other tools as 
well as redirect MSFcli’s output to other tools.
To launch MSFcli, we need to execute “msfcli” command in the shell followed by the options 
that we would like to use.
MSFGUI
MSFGUI was the first official GUI version for Metasploit, but it’s not frequently updated any 
more. Therefore, we won’t discuss it in this book. What we will discuss next is another GUI named 
“Armitage,” which is updated frequently.
Armitage
Armitage is a powerful GUI interface for Metasploit; it’s fully interactive and also comes prein-
stalled with BackTrack. Later in this section, we will look at how similar tasks can be accom-
plished faster with Armitage than with Metasploit.
Metasploit Utilities
Over the years, there have been a couple of utilities introduced with Metasploit. The main pur-
pose of introducing these utilities was to use the components 
outside
the Metasploit Framework 
within
it.
The most popular ones are MSFpayload and MSFencode. Let’s look at them in brief. We will 
learn how to use them in the “Client Side Exploitation” chapter (Chapter 8).
MSFPayload
MSFPayload is used for generating payloads, shell codes, and other executables. A payload is the 
code that you want to run on the victim’s machine after the exploit is completed, whereas a shell 
code is usually part of the payload written in the assembly language.
MSFEncode
MSFEncode utilizes different methods to encode payloads so that they don’t end up getting 
detected by antivirus engines. Almost all encoding techniques would fail to get past antiviruses, 
but with some tweaking, we can bypass most of them. Anyway, in the end our main goal is to just 
get past the particular antivirus that the victim is using.
MSFVenom
MSFVenom is a newly introduced feature in the Metasploit Framework. It is a combination of 
both MSFpayload and MSFencode. With MSFvenom, we can perform both create/encode shell 

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Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide
codes under a single tool. We will take a look at it once we get to the “Client Side Exploitation” 
chapter (Chapter 8).