We are happy to announce that the first beta release of the 3.0 tree is now ready for download. This release contains numerous bug fixes and improvements to the previous alpha release. 3.0 Beta 1 is fully compatible with Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and Windows using our custom Cygwin installer. If you would like to discuss the beta release with other users, please subscribe to the framework-beta mailing list by sending a blank email to framework-beta-subscribe[at]metasploit.com.

If you are attending the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, I will be presenting on the new functionality available in this release at 4:45pm on August 2nd. This talk is part of the /dev/random track and is entitled Metasploit Reloaded.

Some quick highlights compared to version 2.6:
- All modules are organized in a directory heirarchy
- Common Meterpreter modules have been merged into 'stdapi'
- New Meterpreter features significantly help with penetration testing
- New type of "passive" exploits (browser, sniffer, ids attacks)
- Denial of service modules (ms05-035 and unpatched RRAS)
- Support for multiple shells per exploit with passive modules
- Support for recent browser bugs :-)

This release can be obtained from the Metasploit web site.