Ⓜ️Metasploitable 3 for VMware Workstation

I've spent some good hours trying to get Metasploitable 3 to work on VMware Workstation as a homelab. Here I have sorted the steps that got the metasploitable 3 boxes to work on VMWare Workstation.

Click here for VirtualBox

The official instructions Building Metasploitable 3 from Rapid7 did not work for me. I have encountered issues similar to these below when building up the boxes: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploitable3/issues/442 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant-aws/issues/3 https://github.com/rapid7/metasploitable3/issues/257

Following the installation steps below avoid the whole building steps. Instead, my steps download the working prebuilt boxes from rapid7-owned vagrant cloud host and allow me to deploy the metasploitable boxes from there.

Installations

Prerequisite

Before proceeding to the below installation steps, disable Windows Defender's Real-time protection and Cloud-delivered protection. Turn these back on after installing the metasploitable boxes.

1. Installing Packer

Download Packer (Amd64) at https://www.packer.io/downloads

Go to C:\Program Files\ and create a new folder named Packer

Extract the packer.exe to the newly created folder

Launch the Run app, by pressing the Windows key ⊞ + R, then type SystemPropertiesAdvanced

Click Environment Variables...

Look at the System Variables portion then double click on Path

Then click New and paste the directory path C:\Program Files\Packer then press OK

Check if Packer is configured correctly, type and run packerin PowerShell. The result should look like this

2. Installing Vagrant

Download and install Vagrant from https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads

After rebooting when the installation is done, check if Vagrant is installed correctly by typing vagrant in PowerShell. The result should look like this

3. Installing Vagrant VMWare utility

Download and install Vagrant VMWare utility from https://www.vagrantup.com/vmware/downloads

4. Installing Vagrant plugins

Two necessary vagrant plugins to install are the reload plugin and the vmware-desktop plugin

Launch PowerShell

Install vagrant-reload plugin, type and run

vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload

Install vmware-desktop plugin, type and run

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-desktop

Check if the plugins are installed by typing vagrant plugin list. The result should look like this

5. Resetting VMware virtual network setting (Optional)

This step was necessary for me to avoid the halting at "Waiting for SSH to become available..." issue. I've noted this step as optional in case you didn't encounter the issue.

Launch VMware Workstation and reset the virtual network setting by going to Edit > Virtual Network Editor

Then click on Change Settings, which then gives the option to Restore Default

6. Installing the metasploitable boxes

Go to the directory C:\ and make a new folder named metasploitable3-workspace

Open up PowerShell and traverse to the newly created folder C:\metasploitable3-workspace

Type and run

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rapid7/metasploitable3/master/Vagrantfile" -OutFile "Vagrantfile"

There should now exist a file named Vagrantfile in the directory

At the same directory location, type and run the below code on PowerShell

vagrant box add rapid7/metasploitable3-ub1404 --provider vmware_desktop

This will download the prebuilt metasploitable Linux box for VMware Workstation. The result should look like this

Back on PowerShell, type and run the below code

vagrant box add rapid7/metasploitable3-win2k8 --provider vmware_desktop

This will download the prebuilt metasploitable Windows Server 2008 box for VMware Workstation. The result should look like this *Note: The win2k8 box size is huge (~7.3 GB) so the download will take a while*