Part 2 - Commercial vs Open-Source Frameworks

PART 2: COMMERCIAL VS OPEN-SOURCE ECOSYSTEMS

The Commercial Tooling Market

Commercial offensive security tools are a multi-billion dollar industry. Understanding this market helps you make informed career decisions and appreciate why certain tools exist.

Major Commercial Platforms:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              COMMERCIAL OFFENSIVE TOOLING                    │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                              │
│  COBALT STRIKE (~$5,900/year per user)                       │
│  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    │
│  • Industry standard for red teaming                         │
│  • Malleable C2 profiles (traffic customization)             │
│  • Beacon implant with extensive post-ex capabilities        │
│  • Team server for multi-operator coordination               │
│  • Excellent documentation and support                       │
│  • BUT: Heavily signatured, cracked versions widespread      │
│                                                              │
│  CORE IMPACT (~$50,000/year)                                 │
│  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    │
│  • Enterprise-focused, comprehensive platform                │
│  • Automated exploitation and pivoting                       │
│  • Compliance-focused reporting                              │
│  • Extensive exploit database                                │
│  • Client-side attack capabilities                           │
│  • BUT: Expensive, less flexible than custom tools           │
│                                                              │
│  CANVAS (~$30,000/year)                                      │
│  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    │
│  • Immunity Inc's exploitation framework                     │
│  • Python-based, extensible                                  │
│  • Exploit pack with 0-days and N-days                       │
│  • MOSDEF shellcode compiler                                 │
│  • BUT: Smaller user base than Cobalt Strike                 │
│                                                              │
│  METASPLOIT PRO (~$15,000/year)                              │
│  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    │
│  • Commercial version of Metasploit Framework                │
│  • Web GUI, automated scanning, social engineering           │
│  • Collaboration features, reporting                         │
│  • Quick exploits, automated post-exploitation               │
│  • BUT: Still well-signatured despite being commercial       │
│                                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why Companies Pay for Commercial Tools:

1. Support and Liability: Vendor support, SLAs, legal protection
2. Documentation: Comprehensive guides, training materials
3. Compliance: Meeting audit requirements, certifications
4. Team Coordination: Multi-operator features, reporting
5. Time Savings: Pre-built capabilities vs custom development
6. Legal Safety: Licensed, authorized use

The Reality Check:

Despite high prices, commercial tools have significant limitations:

• Heavily Signatured: Widely known, easily detected
• Generic: Not tailored to specific targets
• Licensing Restrictions: Per-user costs, audit trails
• Limited Customization: Closed-source, proprietary
• Leaked/Cracked: Cobalt Strike cracks widely available

This creates opportunities for custom tool development.

The Open-Source Ecosystem

Open-source offensive tools have democratized security testing but come with trade-offs:

Major Open-Source Frameworks:

METASPLOIT FRAMEWORK (Ruby)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• The standard: 2000+ exploits, 500+ payloads
• Modular architecture: exploits, payloads, auxiliary, post
• Meterpreter: Feature-rich post-exploitation payload
• Extensive community, constant updates
• Downsides: Well-signatured, noisy, AV/EDR catches easily

EMPIRE (PowerShell/Python) [Deprecated, but BC Security fork]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• PowerShell-based post-exploitation framework
• Pure in-memory operation, no disk artifacts
• Extensive modules, lateral movement capabilities
• Downsides: AMSI/ETW can detect, signatures exist

SLIVER (Go) 
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Modern C2 written in Go 
• Cross-platform implants, multiple C2 protocols
• Active development, good evasion out-of-box
• Multiplayer support, extensible
• Excellent reference for learning Go offensive development

MYTHIC (Multi-language)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Agent-agnostic C2 framework
• Supports multiple payload types (Python, C#, Go)
• Web UI, Docker-based deployment
• Collaborative red teaming features

Open-Source Advantages:

✓ Free: No licensing costs
✓ Customizable: Modify source code
✓ Learning: Study implementation details
✓ Community: Shared knowledge, modules
✓ Transparent: Know exactly what it does

Open-Source Disadvantages:

✗ Well-Known: Defenders study the same tools
✗ Signatured: AV/EDR vendors focus on popular tools
✗ No Support: Community-driven, best-effort
✗ Operational Security: Public code = public TTPs

The Custom Tools Approach

This is where you come in. The most effective red teams build custom tooling:

Why Custom Tools Win:

1. UNIQUE SIGNATURES
   Commercial/OSS tools → Known to defenders
   Custom tools → Zero prior exposure

2. TAILORED TO TARGET
   Generic tools → One-size-fits-all approach
   Custom tools → Designed for specific environment

3. OPERATIONAL SECURITY
   Public tools → TTPs known, countermeasures exist
   Custom tools → Defenders don't know what to look for

4. FLEXIBILITY
   Fixed tools → Limited to built-in capabilities
   Custom tools → Build exactly what you need

5. LEARNING
   Using tools → Understand WHAT they do
   Building tools → Understand HOW and WHY

The Economics of Custom Development:

Career Insight:

Organizations increasingly value developers who can build custom tools over operators who only use existing ones. This skill differentiates you in the job market.

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