Re: Need Some Basic Information

[Todd Haverkos <infosec () haverkos com>]

Thugzclub Thugzclub <thugzclub () googlemail com> writes:

> I am only interested in host based scanners that can report on
> vulnerable products. I know that Nessus can solve this problem using
> credentialed scan, but what issues are there with credentialed
> scans?

Mostly just political ones.  For some strange reason, groups are often happier to let you install
an agent than give you admin credentials.

If the political fight to get creds is surmountable in your
organization, you'll end up with lots more visibility and up to date
plugins using a tool from a security vendor than relying on "missing
patch" info out of a systems management vendor who'll only tell you
that you have a risk for issues for which the vendor has issued a
patch.

You may have to fight to get domain admin or local admin creds to scan
your windows hosts, get accounts and sudo privs on unix hosts (some
scanners support unix ssh public key auth +sudo and su...and some do
not--super useful in environments where remote root logins follow best
practices and aren't allowed), get the network folks to part with an
enable password if doing network device scanning.

Passive vulnerability scanning (where you divine off the wire, whether
vulnerable client software is in use based on headers and protocols
seen) is an interesting in between stop from network only vuln
scanning and full credentialed scanning.   Works well if you can get a
passive vuln scanner in line with the traffic of interest, and there
are no political battles. 


--
Todd Haverkos, LPT MsCompE
http://haverkos.com/

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