The Metasploit Framework is a Ruby-based, open-source framework that is used by information security professionals and cybercriminals to find, exploit, and validate system vulnerabilities. The framework consists of various exploitation tools and penetration testing tools. Information security teams most commonly use Metasploit for penetration testing (or “ethical hacking”) to identify and remediate any existing vulnerabilities across an organization’s networks.

There are almost 165,000 known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) listed in the NIST Database. In October of 2020, the NSA published a list of the 25 CVEs most likely to be exploited by Nation-State attackers in China; Checkpoint software found over 3 million attempts to penetrate networks or steal files using these known vulnerabilities.