// Comparison

Hacking et Forensic vs Metasploit: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Offensive, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Intermediate

4/52015

Développez vos propres outils en Python

Franck Ebel, Jérôme Hennecart

A hands-on French guide to building your own offensive and forensic tools in Python — networking, packet crafting, web and forensic scripting — for people who'd rather write the tool than buy it.

Intermediate

4/52025

Metasploit

The Penetration Tester's Guide

David Kennedy, Mati Aharoni, Devon Kearns, Jim O'Gorman, Daniel G. Graham

The second edition of the definitive No Starch guide to the Metasploit Framework, updated by the project's original maintainers and newer contributors for the modern Framework.

Read this if

French-speaking pentesters and analysts who know some Python and want to build custom tooling: sockets, scapy-style packet work, web clients and forensic scripts. Practical and project-driven.

Pentesters and red teamers who want to know Metasploit cold, or developers who want to extend the Framework. Written by the original project leads and updated for the current ecosystem; the canonical Metasploit text.

Skip this if

Complete programming beginners, or readers who want ready-made tools rather than to build them. You need basic Python comfort to get value.

Readers wanting modern post-exploitation tradecraft against well-defended targets. Metasploit shines in lab and OSCP-style scenarios; against modern EDR with kernel callbacks, the playbook is more nuanced than this book covers.

Key takeaways

One of the few French books that teaches security by having you build the tools, not just run them.
Python-centric and practical: networking, packet manipulation, web and forensic scripting from scratch.
Best for the reader who already codes a little and wants to turn that into custom offensive/forensic capability.

Metasploit's value is workflow integration: payloads, post-exploitation modules, sessions, pivoting all wired together. The book teaches you to use the framework as a force multiplier, not as a list of exploits.
Custom modules (auxiliary, exploit, post) are how you turn Metasploit into your toolkit; the book's chapters on module development are the highest-leverage material.
The 2nd edition (2025) is updated for the modern Framework, mainstream Linux, and the current model of Meterpreter; the original 2011 edition is now dated.

How they compare

Hacking et Forensic and Metasploit are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

Both books target intermediate-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Hacking et Forensic and Metasploit both cover Offensive, Tooling, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Hacking et Forensic

→ Alternatives to Hacking et Forensic → What to read after Hacking et Forensic