Updates to Cobalt Strike and Armitage are available now. I spent the past two weeks testing these programs through unit tests, a class QA focus group, and multiple penetration tests of my local lab from Amazon’s EC2.

This update fixes several bugs in both programs and I was even able to contribute a few fixes to the Metasploit Framework.

As usual, the trial version of Cobalt Strike is available at:

http://www.advancedpentest.com (changelog)

Use msfupdate to get your hands on the updated Armitage release, or go to:

http://www.fastandeasyhacking.com (changelog)

For either application, I recommend that you update the Metasploit Framework to get revision 15972. A CPU resource starvation condition was mitigated last night. This bug would cause a Ruby thread to take over the CPU for up to 10 minutes at a time, making Armitage and Cobalt Strike barely usable. I have a blog post coming on this particular bug.

P.S. Strategic Cyber (*cough*me*cough*) is at the Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference today and tomorrow. Stop by our table to get one of the nifty penetration testing lab DVDs with exercises and target VMs paired to our online course.