For some fun, why not set a custom banner on your Metasploit Framework install?
The Metasploit Framework is a great penetration testing tool and provides a really simple way to set a custom banner for msfconsole. Why would you want to do this? Fame, ego-massaging, lots of other reasons I’m sure but since when have good reasons to hack something been required?
Adding the banner
With the latest version of the framework (v4.10.1-dev at the time of writing) when you fire up msfconsole it will look in the ~/.msf4/logos directory and add any files in it to the list of banners that are randomly cycled through when you start msfconsole. To add your own simply create this directory - if it doesn’t already exist - and put your l33t ascii art skills in there.
osx:~ marc$ ls -l ~/.msf4/logos/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 marc staff 618 27 Nov 11:14 4armed_ascii.txt
When you start msfconsole you might get your banner or you might not, this is the joy of randomness. To check if it’s there you can rather crudely keep executing the banner command in msfconsole until it appears.
msf > banner
.......7..77777,. .
.....777.,7777777:. 8O. .OO88O. ?OO. .OO. 8OO8888 ~OO88OO8 . .
. ,777,.?777777777. ZO8O ....O, . O: ?8OO...,O8O. 8O ~O OO.
...7777..7777..7777= .O=.O7 .O, .8. ?8.8O.88.:O. 8O ~O .OO
.?7777..7777..77777 OO :O .O8OOO. ?8. ,OO. :O. 8OOOOOO ~O $O
..7777+.?7777..77777 OOOOOOOO ..O, 88.. ?8.. . .:O. 8O ~O OO.
.?777..77777..77777 ,O, O8 .O,.. OO ?8. . .:O. 8O ~O ..8O.
..777..........I77, 8Z O~.O, OO ?8. :O. 8OOOOOO ~OOOOO88
...777777777..777I.
. .77777777..77.
... .~77777...
=[ metasploit v4.10.1-dev [core:4.10.1.pre.dev api:1.0.0]]
+ -- --=[ 1372 exploits - 766 auxiliary - 221 post ]
+ -- --=[ 340 payloads - 37 encoders - 8 nops ]
+ -- --=[ Free Metasploit Pro trial: http://r-7.co/trymsp ]
There can be only one
But if you only want your banner to be displayed the simplest thing to do is set the MSFLOGO environment variable to the location of the file containing your logo.
export MSFLOGO=~/.msf4/logos/4armed_ascii.txt
Next time you load up msfconsole your text creation will be displayed. Of course, to ensure this is always the case you need to set that environment variable in your shell’s profile. I’ll leave that to you.
Bonus fun
If you want some extra fun unset MSFLOGO and try setting the environment variables GOCOW or THISISHALLOWEEN to 1.
