Automated Vulnerable Environment Provisioning for Metasploit

Many Metasploit modules include documentation describing how to manually build vulnerable test environments. However, these setup steps are performed outside the framework and often vary between users, making exploit verification slower and less consistent. This project proposes a new Metasploit command, build_vuln, that automates the provisioning of vulnerable environments directly from within msfconsole. The command will resolve a module’s associated environment definition and launch the environment using OCI compliant container configurations. The system will support both Docker and Podman runtimes, including rootless execution, through a runtime abstraction layer that avoids tight coupling to a specific container engine. A health management component will ensure environments are ready before exploitation, while an in memory registry will track environments created during the active session and allow users to list, manage, and tear them down. The project will also introduce standardized reusable environment definitions that can be referenced by multiple modules. Selected modules that currently rely on manual Docker instructions will be refactored to use the new mechanism, and a CI integration prototype will demonstrate how these definitions can be reused for automated module verification. The final deliverables include the build_vuln command implementation, container runtime integration, standardized environment definitions, reference module refactoring, CI integration prototype, and comprehensive developer and user documentation.