Another sign of the times in the maturing penetration-testing market: Core Security Technologies today announced that its commercial product will operate hand-in-hand with Metasploit's open-source tool.

Core, which sells the user-friendly penetration product Core Impact, says the next version of its tool will let expert pen testers run Metasploit tools together with Impact rather than separately, and less-technical users can incorporate some of Metasploit's automated pen-testing functions under Impact.

Fred Pinkett, vice president of product management for Core Security, says Core has been considering integration with Metasploit for a couple of years now. "We see Metasploit as a vibrant open-source community that some of our customers like to use," he says. Pinkett says some Core customers who use both Metasploit and Core Impact tools had been requesting integration between the two, he says.

The Metasploit Project, which was purchased by Rapid 7 last year, remains an open-source, community initiative. Rapid 7, which sells vulnerability scanners, plans to enhance its NeXpose vulnerability management product line and its own penetration testing services with Metasploit technology.

HD Moore, chief security officer for Rapid7 and creator of Metasploit, says while the new integration of Metasploit with Core Impact won't affect how Rapid 7 manages the Metasploit Project or its future plans, it could yield better automation and additional features for the open-source tool. "We look forward to integrating with any product that our users find valuable, even if there is a potential conflict with Rapid7's core business," Moore says.

The move by Core reflects the multitool approach adopted by many organizations, he says. "I think this is a great move for Core -- it shows that they recognize that a single tool is not always the best fit for every job. The penetration-testing market is a small niche in the scheme of things, and most practitioners use a wide variety of tools to get the job done," Moore says.

The IMPACT Pro-Metasploit integration will be included in the next version of CORE ImpactPro, which is due to ship in April, according to Core. Metasploit users will be able to launch a module from Core that deploys an Impact Pro agent on a system "targeted" by a Metasploit exploit. "The Core agent comes up, and I get the full capability," which includes reporting, automated pen testing, and deep analysis into the compromised system, for instance, Core's Pinkett says. "With one module, you can bring [Metasploit] into Impact," he says.

And for less technical users of Impact, the Impact Pro's automated Rapid Penetration Test will let them run Impact's pen-testing features and then launch Metasploit's db-autopwn feature, which performs automated database exploitation, and upload the results back into the Core product. "The user would never have to see or be in the Metasploit interface," he says.