Working the Machine
Running Services
Some tools aren’t things you run, they’re servers you turn on. During an engagement you occasionally need your own machine to listen — to accept an SSH connection, host a page, back Metasploit with a database, or run BeEF. Leaving those services running all the time would be a needless exposure, so Oniomarchy keeps them off by default and gives you a menu to flip them on when you need them and off when you’re done.
They live under Trigger → Pentest → Services, each as a submenu with Start, Stop, and Restart. The submenu header itself shows whether the service is currently running, so you always know the state at a glance.
The services
| Service | Unit | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| SSH | sshd |
Remote login and file transfer to your machine. |
| RDP | xrdp |
Remote desktop access. |
| Database | postgresql |
The backend Metasploit uses — run msfdb init once after starting it. |
| Apache | httpd |
A full web server, for hosting phishing pages or exploits beyond a quick file server. |
| Nginx | nginx |
An alternative web server. |
| BeEF | beef |
The Browser Exploitation Framework’s hook and control server. |
Confirm before you expose
The services that open you up to the network — SSH, RDP, and BeEF — are gated behind a confirmation prompt. Starting or restarting one pops a real terminal confirmation you have to accept; you can’t turn on a listening, potentially-exposed service by a stray click. Stopping a service never asks — shutting something down is always safe, so it’s always immediate. The lower-risk services (Database, Apache, Nginx) start without the prompt.
This matters most for BeEF, which binds to all interfaces on port 3000. As a safety
catch, BeEF also refuses to start at all while it still has its default beef/beef
credentials — so even if you confirm the start, nothing is actually exposed until
you’ve deliberately changed those in its config. See
BeEF for that step.
Why these
The list is deliberately short — these are the servers you actually reach for during offensive work, and nothing is here just to pad the menu. If you find yourself wanting one that isn’t, that’s the kind of thing an overlay like this can grow.