Ethical Hacking

Learn to find vulnerabilities before the bad guys do! Gain real world hands on hacking experience in our state of the art hacking lab. Course designed and taught by expert instructors with years of penetration testing experience. 12 student maximum in every class. Certification attempt included in every package.
Computer Forensics Training at InfoSec Institute

Gain the in-demand skills of a certified computer examiner, learn to recover trace data left behind by fraud, theft, and cybercrime perpetrators. Discover the source of computer crime and abuse at your organization so that it never happens again. All of our class sizes are guaranteed to be 12 students or less to facilitate one-on-one interaction with one of our expert instructors.




Network Security Pen-Test
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: vulnerability scanners not effective? or just a false-positive?

Subject: Re: vulnerability scanners not effective? or just a false-positive?
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:10:13 +0200
Hi,

have been able to access them as a piece of cake. Ofcourse the network is
safe as long as the attacker doesnt "learn" the name of the important
directories. But i think it is a very "huge" vulnerability. and nessus didnt
even give a hinch!!

Nessus, like many vulnerability scanners is a blacklist. These scanners search for "known vulnerabilities". You cannot expect them to know of all vulnerabilities in a timely fashion. Furthermore, how did you configure the scanner? Was it set to crawl the website or did you tell it how the website was structured? Did you tell it to try all exploits or just try from what it thinks the OS/app is? While Nessus is a really good scanner, there is also an element of human interaction that is needed for it to work optimally for you.



and one more quest. How many of you think that the existance of the default banners in services(eg apache default error pages) are a security threat, if not high, atleast medium?. I do.

First, they wouldn't be the threat, they would be the vulnerability if you're talking Risk. Second, you do mean existence of correct and exact banners, don't you? While the less Visibility and information you provide, the better, there is sometimes a business need or an established balance between having an Exposure (aka Information Leak) and the cost of fixing it in a timely manner, most often before a service is put in a hostile environment. Finally, I can agree with neither your high, medium, or low mean nothing to other people. My wife likes her shower really hot. But that's hot to me. She thinks it's normal (her medium). Risk is relative to the organization not to you. In the OSSTMM 3.0, banners are often an Exposure if they are true, which is a level 4 calculation (1st being a vulnerability) and is defined as simply that which provides information on a Visibility. If banners are false or misleading on purpose to hide information on the service and other measures are taken to truly disguise the operational work behind the service, they are calculated under the Privacy loss control for that Access point from that vector.


I know, I over-answered.  Sorry.  Ya'll can wake up now.

Sincerely,
-pete.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This List Sponsored by: Cenzic

Concerned about Web Application Security? As attacks through web applications continue to rise, you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the most comprehensive solutions to meet your application security penetration testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm). Download FREE whitepaper on how a managed service can help you: http://www.cenzic.com/forms/ec.php?pubid=10025
And, now for a limited time we can do a FREE audit for you to confirm your results from other product. Contact us at request@cenzic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>