// Comparison

Metasploit vs The Hacker Playbook 3: 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

4/52025

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.

Intermediate

4/52018

The Hacker Playbook 3

Practical Guide to Penetration Testing — Red Team Edition

Peter Kim

Peter Kim's hands-on red-team field manual: assumed-breach scenarios, lateral movement, AV/EDR evasion, and the operational rhythm of a real engagement rather than a checklist of CVEs.

Read this if

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.

Junior-to-mid red teamers and pentesters moving past CTFs into corporate engagements who want a coherent narrative of how an op flows. The strongest part is the assumed-breach mindset — the assumption that you start from a foothold and have to make it count.

Skip this if

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.

Readers expecting 2024-current tradecraft. Cobalt Strike, Sliver, EDR-bypass research, and modern identity attacks (AAD, conditional access, OAuth abuse) have all moved on since 2018. Treat the techniques as concepts, not commands.

Key takeaways

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.

Assumed breach is the right starting frame for almost any modern engagement; perimeter-to-DA scenarios are increasingly fiction.
The book's value is the workflow — recon, foothold, escalate, persist, exfil — not the specific tools used to demonstrate it.
Pair every chapter with a current blog source; the toolchain rotates faster than print can track.

How they compare

Metasploit and The Hacker Playbook 3 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.

Metasploit and The Hacker Playbook 3 both cover Offensive, Pentesting, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Metasploit

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