Configuring PostgreSQL

An important feature of Metasploit is the backend database support for PostgreSQL, which you can use to store your penetration-testing results. Any penetration test consists of lots of information and can run for several days, so it becomes essential to store the intermediate results and findings, such as target host data, system logs, collected evidence, and report data. As a good penetration-testing tool, Metasploit has proper database integration to store the results quickly and efficiently. In this recipe, we will be dealing with the installation and configuration process of a database in Kali Linux.

Getting ready

To configure PostgreSQL, we will first start the service and then use the Metasploit msfdb command to initialize the database.

How to do it...

1. To set up our Metasploit database, we first need to start up the PostgreSQL server, using the following command:

root@kali:~# systemctl start postgresql 

2. Then we need to create and initialize the msf database with the msfdb command with the init option:

root@kali:~# msfdb init
Creating database user 'msf'
Enter password for new role: 
Enter it again: 
Creating databases 'msf' and 'msf_test'
Creating configuration file in /usr/share/metasploit-framework/config/database.yml
Creating initial database schema

The msfdb command allows you to manage the Metasploit Framework database, not just initialize the database. To display all the msfdb options, run the command as follows:

root@kali:~# msfdb

Manage a metasploit framework database

  msfdb init # initialize the database
  msfdb reinit # delete and reinitialize the database
  msfdb delete # delete database and stop using it
  msfdb start # start the database
  msfdb stop # stop the database

3. To modify the database configuration file, we can edit the database.yml file  located in /usr/share/metasploit-framework/config/database.yml:

root@kali:~# cat /usr/share/metasploit-framework/config/database.yml
development:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: msf
  username: msf
  password: 3HcNhAtdH6F9F2iGa4z3wJVoI7UK1Ot+MG1zuKjYzn4=
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: msf
  username: msf
  password: 3HcNhAtdH6F9F2iGa4z3wJVoI7UK1Ot+MG1zuKjYzn4=
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5

test:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: msf_test
  username: msf
  password: 3HcNhAtdH6F9F2iGa4z3wJVoI7UK1Ot+MG1zuKjYzn4=
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5

Notice the default username, password, and default database that has been created. If necessary, you can also change these values according to your preference.

4. Now, let's launch the msfconsole interface and confirm that Metasploit is successfully connected to the database using the db_status command:

msf > db_status
[*] postgresql connected to msf

There's more...

To connect to a database manually, you can use the db_connect command followed by the credentials, host, and database you want to connect to, using the following syntax:

db_connect <user:pass>@<host:port>/<database>

To test the db_connect command, we can use the values of the username, password, database name, and port number, from the database.yml file:

msf > db_disconnect 
msf > db_status 
[*] postgresql selected, no connection
msf > db_connect msf:[email protected]/msf
[*] Rebuilding the module cache in the background...
msf > db_status 
[*] postgresql connected to msf

We can also use db_connect with the -y option and the path to the database configuration file:

msf > db_disconnect 
msf > db_status 
[*] postgresql selected, no connection
msf > db_connect -y /usr/share/metasploit-framework/config/database.yml
[*] Rebuilding the module cache in the background...
msf > db_status 
[*] postgresql connected to msf

If you want the database to connect every time you launch msfconsole, copy the database configuration file to the .msf4 directory which was created in your home directory by the Metasploit installer.