Part 5 - Metasploit Payloads & Stagers

Let's learn a little bit more about what a payload is. When I say the word payload, all that really means to you is that it's a way to perform an exploit. It's an exploit module. That's the way to think about.  That's the Metasploit terminology if you will.

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We have different types of modules. We have Singles, Stagers, and Stages. A Single module is one that's just stand alone. It's basically self-contained. It doesn't need any other components. But if we have a Stager, what that's doing is trying to stage a connection between  the callee or your Metasploit instance and the victim machine. We think about it as a way to make the connection as part of the overall exploit.

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Lastly, we have Stages which are the pieces of the payload that are downloaded by the stagers themselves. If I'm building a network connection, reverse TCP, for instance, or a Meterpreter shell or HTTP connection.  That's what the Stager does. What the Stages are, the individual pieces that are needed to build that connection up.