Beacon v0.2.0 Unleashes Major Overhaul: 352 Native CVEs, 122 Exploit Playbooks, and 2,065 Drydock Tests

The Beacon scanner has undergone a massive, multi-faceted expansion, transforming its core capabilities for detection, exploitation, and validation. This overhaul represents a significant leap in offensive security tooling, moving from a limited framework to a comprehensive, high-fidelity platform. The update is not incremental; it fundamentally re-architects the tool's ability to identify vulnerabilities, chain exploits, and verify findings at scale.

Detection capabilities have been supercharged, with native CVE detection exploding from 30 to 352. This is powered by 411 version rules and 43 dedicated probes for version extraction, alongside 153 native fingerprint probes. Crucially, all 443 total CVE check IDs are now fully routed from external tools like Nuclei and Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE), leaving zero findings unactionable. The system now intelligently correlates findings, with 10 new chain patterns that map initial access vectors like SSRF or default credentials to subsequent cloud compromise or remote code execution.

On the exploitation front, the arsenal has more than doubled. There are now 122 exploit playbooks, up from 60, ensuring every service has CVE-specific attack chains. Post-exploitation modules have also expanded to 113, creating a complete data extraction pipeline. A key new feature automatically routes NSE discoveries directly into tailored exploit chains, closing the loop between reconnaissance and action. Performance is a major focus, with optimizations like discovery skips for IP targets saving 1.1 seconds per scan, pre-indexed probes, and increased concurrency slashing operational latency. All this power is rigorously validated by a new testing suite of 2,065 drydock test files containing 3,887 individual assertions, ensuring reliability and accuracy at every step.