Chapter 2

1. Metasploit community edition and Metasploit Framework are open source. Metasploit Pro is the commercial edition, which comes with a lot of extra features. Check out the following link for more information: https://www.rapid7.com/products/metasploit/download/editions/

2. Metasploit Framework Version 5 comes allows us to encrypt our payloads with AES or RC4 encryption. You just have to generate the payload using the --encrypt option in MSFVenom.

3. No, you cannot. Currently, Metasploit Framework only supports PostgreSQL as the backend.

4. The Metasploit Framework database can be connected directly via port 5432. If you want to communicate with the database over a secure channel, you can connect Metasploit Framework to the database using the PostgreSQL web service, which runs over HTTP/HTTPS.