A popular open-source Web application attack and audit framework is now under the umbrella of Rapid7, the vulnerability management company that purchased the Metasploit Project last year. The w3af project ultimately will bring more Web security features and functions to both the Metasploit tool and Rapid7's commercial NeXpose product.
The open-source Metasploit penetration-testing tool currently has exploits for a handful of Web application bugs, as well as a few for generic Web flaws that affect multiple applications, says HD Moore, chief architect of Metasploit and chief security officer at Rapid7. But the goal is to expand Metasploit with more integrated Web flaw detection and attack features.

"Where we are moving to is toward dynamic detection and exploitation of vulnerabilities in custom applications and in known-vulnerable applications installed in nonstandard directories," Moore says. "So [we're] combining [Web] crawling with scanning to find vulnerable applications and then apply 'generic' Web application exploit modules against those to get access.

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