Managing License Keys

A license key determines the commercial edition that you can access, the number of days that remain on the license, and the number of users that are allowed to use Metasploit at a given time.

Metasploit licenses are perpetual licenses, which enable you to use the application indefinitely. However, the license itself expires every year. When the license expires, you must renew the license if you want to continue to receive updates for Metasploit. You can still run Metasploit, but you can only run the last version that was released before your license key expired.

Activating Metasploit

After you install Metasploit, you must input your license key to activate the product.

If you haven't already activated your copy of Metasploit, go to https://localhost:3790/setup/activation to enter your license key.

If you don't have a license key and need to request one, please visit this page to request one.

Viewing the Current License Key

To access the license key area, select Administration > Software License from the Global Menu. The License Key Details shows you the information for the key currently in use.

If the license key for Metasploit Pro expires or if you need to enter a product key for a different Metasploit product, you can change the license key that the system currently uses.

Updating a License Key

  1. Choose Administration > Software Licenses from the main menu.

Software License Menu

  1. Enter the license key in the Product Key field located under the Change License section.

License Key Field

  1. Activate the license.

Updating Metasploit Offline

Rapid7 provides offline update files that you can use to safely update Metasploit without an Internet connection. For each weekly release, Rapid7 e-mails you the links and instructions that you need to update Metasploit. The links point you to bin files that you can download and save to a portable storage device or shared network location so that you can easily transfer the file to your Metasploit server.

To apply an offline update:

  1. Log in to the Metasploit web interface.
  2. Locate the footer at the bottom of the user interface.

Metasploit footer

  1. Identify the current release version of Metasploit that you have installed.

Metasploit version

Note:  You will see the product edition, the release version, and the update version. For example, in Metasploit Pro 4.6.0 - update 2013050101, the release version is 4.6.0.

  1. From the e-mail that you have received from Rapid7, find and download the offline update files that you need.
  2. From within Metasploit, select Administration > Software Updates from the Global menu.

Global Menu

  1. Find the Product Updates area.

Product Updates

  1. Click the Offline Update File link.

Offline Update Link

  1. Browse to the location of the offline update file and select it.

Browse to the location of the offline activation file

The offline update file is the bin file that you downloaded from the Rapid7 e-mail.

  1. Click the Install Update button.

Install the offline update.

Metasploit installs the update and restarts the Metasploit service when the update is done. Please wait a few minutes for the service to restart.