How to Install Metasploitable on Mac with Parallels Desktop

Author: Diego Cuevas

Originally published: 01 August 2023

If you are reading this article, you are probably well aware what a Virtual Machine is, what Metasploitable is, and other complicated software terminology, however for the sake of completeness, I’ll define some important concepts:

• Virtual Machine: A computer system created using software on one physical computer in order to emulate the functionality of another separate physical computer.¹
• Parallels Desktop: A computer program that lets you run virtual machines on your computer. (Available for Mac and ChromeOS)
• Metasploitable: A Linux virtual machine purposefully build to hack it.
  
  

Follow this guide to install Metasploitable Linux on Mac with Parallels Desktop:

1. Download Metasploitable, your Mac will automatically unzip the file and you’ll find this folder on your Downloads folder:

   
   

   You’ll see these files when you open the folder:
   
   

   
   

2. Parallels has this guide about converting third-party VMs to Parallels, you are free to try and use it, although in my experience, it probably won’t, it will display a message about not being able to detect the OS and to try converting the VM with the prl_convert utility. What’s the prl_convert utility? We’ll find out in a moment.
   
   

3. Open up the Terminal, if you’ve never used it, it looks like this:
   

   

4. Write and run the following command: $ prl_convert ~/path/to/vmx --allow-no-os, where you replace ~/path/to/vmx with your path to the .vmx file inside the Metasploitable folder, in my case this happens:
   
   

   
   

5. And your Metasploitable VM is ready to be used!

Footnotes: