RE: Scanning XP SP2

Thanks for everyone's ideas so far about finding live XP SP2 hosts (that
are not on the same subnet as the scanner). Apologies if I'm going over
old-ground and of course this is not necessarily such a problem for
everyone. 

I was quite encouraged by the idea that TCP ping to the UPnP port should
detect a live XP SP2 host. Unfortunately it seems that with XP SP2
firewall the UPnP ports will only be unblocked if the local admin has
done it deliberately or installed UPnP framework optional UI components
(in which case the UPnP f/w exception is automatically enabled). I think
in most cases the UPnP ports will stay blocked.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=886257&SD=tech
  
It seems there is no "magic bullet" for this problem; it looks as if
using dumps of recent router ARP data etc. to shortlist possible live
hosts and/or speculative probing of ports without any certainty that the
target device is currently up is the best that can be done. The
challenge is perhaps simply to decide how to trade-off thoroughness,
time and resources, 

--
Carl Nelson
Distributed Systems Support Section, Computer Centre, University of
Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2060, Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5027 
_______________________________________________
Nessus mailing list
Nessus@list.nessus.org
http://mail.nessus.org/mailman/listinfo/nessus