What is the primary function of Metasploit in penetration testing?

The primary function of Metasploit in penetration testing is to exploit known vulnerabilities. Metasploit is a versatile and powerful penetration testing framework that provides security professionals with the ability to perform real-world attacks against a system or application to identify weaknesses. By leveraging its extensive database of exploits, Metasploit allows testers to simulate attacks by deploying these known vulnerabilities against target systems, which helps organizations understand their security posture and the methods an attacker might use to gain unauthorized access.

This exploitation process is critical in demonstrating how vulnerabilities can be leveraged in an attack scenario and assists organizations in prioritizing their remediation efforts based on the need to address these exploitable vulnerabilities to improve their overall security defenses. Metasploit not only helps in exploiting known issues but also in validating whether the protections implemented can withstand real-world attack techniques.

The other options, while they encompass important aspects of security testing, do not represent the primary function of Metasploit. Scanning for vulnerabilities focuses on identifying potential weaknesses without directly engaging them, probing for unknown flaws relates to discovering unknown vulnerabilities, and testing for zero-day exploits deals specifically with vulnerabilities that are not publicly known yet. Each of these plays a role in the broader scope of security assessments, but exploiting known vulnerabilities is the key highlight of Metasploit