rapid7/metasploitable3 resource

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

5681 stars · 1269 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Metasploitable3 is a deliberately vulnerable virtual machine (Windows and Ubuntu builds) created by Rapid7 for practicing exploit development and penetration testing. It is built automatically with Packer and Vagrant and is intended as a target for the Metasploit Framework.

Use cases

• practice penetration testing against a vulnerable VM
• test metasploit exploits safely
• set up a security training lab
• learn exploitation techniques on Windows and Linux
• build a deliberately vulnerable target environment with vagrant

When to choose

• you need a realistic, intentionally vulnerable target for exploit testing
• you want a reproducible pentest lab built via Packer/Vagrant
• you are training or learning offensive security with Metasploit

When to avoid

• you need a hardened production system or security tool
• you cannot isolate the VM from your network (it is intentionally insecure)
• you only want vulnerability scanning of your own infrastructure

Facets

dataset · maturity maintenance

security penetration-testing vulnerability-scanning infrastructure-as-code security penetration-testing self-hosted developer-tools windows self-hosted vulnerable-vm pentest-lab metasploit vagrant packer security-training exploit-target linux macos docker

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="rapid7/metasploitable3")