This repo has submodules! Remember to run

git submodule init; git submodule update

after cloning.

To build the gem (currently requires Linux or macOS):

rake build

To check the resulting binaries:

rake check

To completely reset your dev environment and delete all binary artifacts:

rake mettle:ultraclean

For general development, there are a few make targets defined:

Running make will build for the local environment. E.g. if you're on macOS, it will build for macOS using your native compiler and tools.

make TARGET=triple will build for a specific host triple. See below for some common ones.

make clean will clean the 'mettle' directory for the current build target

make distclean will clean the entire build target`

make all-parallel will build for every known target, useful with '-j' to build multiple targets at once.

make clean-parallel and make distclean-parallel do similar for all targets.

To generate a payload with Mettle:

mettle = MetasploitPayloads::Mettle.new(platform_triple, config={})

The available platform triples for Linux targets are:

• aarch64-linux-musl
• armv5l-linux-musleabi
• armv5b-linux-musleabi
• i486-linux-musl
• x86_64-linux-musl
• powerpc-linux-muslsf
• powerpc64le-linux-musl
• mips-linux-muslsf
• mipsel-linux-muslsf
• mips64-linux-muslsf
• s390x-linux-musl

For Mingw32-64 Windows targets, the following triples are added. On up-to-date Debian / Ubuntu systems, the mingw-w64 package will install both toolchains.

• x86_64-w64-mingw32
• i686-w64-mingw32

For macOS/iOS builds, the following triples are added. To target older MacOSX versions, see https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX-SDKs to get the appropriate SDK folder.

• arm-iphone-darwin
• aarch64-iphone-darwin
• x86_64-apple-darwin

Available config options are:

• :uri - the uri to connect back to
• :uuid - the UUID to identify the payload
• :debug - to turn on debug messages
• :log_file - the file to send debug messages to instead of stderr

Config options can also be set with:

mettle.config[:key] = val

To get a binary with installed options call:

mettle.to_binary(format=:process_image)

The formats are:

• :exec - a standalone executable that can take command-line arguments (see mettle -h) or use pre-set ones
• :process_image - a process image that must be started with a custom stack (see doc/stack_requirements.md)

To pull your local changes of mettle into your Metasploit install:

1. Add -dev to the version in lib/metasploit-payloads/mettle/version.rb
2. Build the gem as above
3. Copy pkg/metasploit-payloads-mettle-X.X.X.pre.dev.gem to the box you are using for Metasploit if it is different
4. Change the version in your metasploit-framework.gemspec to match the one you just build
5. gem install <path to new gem>
6. Run bundle install in your Framework directory
7. Congrats, you are now done!