Re: MBSA scanner

[Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <jfernandez () germinus com>]

Steven Trewick wrote:
> > > I think you're confusing code with output.  The licenses 
> > > you cite with regard to both SARA and MBSA have restrictions upon 
> > > redistribution of the product, not the output of the product.  
>
>
> > I'm confusing them because output might _include_ significant 
> > information that is in the code. The license covers both the software 
> > and the reports they generate, it does not explicitly exclude the 
> > later (so under copyright laws it _is_ included).
>
> To start with : 
>
>
> To which copyright law, and in which country are you referring, exactly ?

That would be the WIPO copyright treaty [1] (regarding copyright law) 
and the GPL _license_ [2] regarding SARA and Nessus use of copyright 
law. Obviously, different countries have different (more detailed) 
copyright laws, but most (all?) uphold to that treaty including 
redistribution and public communication. The data (i.e. vulnerability 
information wether separate or included in the code) in any of these 
tools is a database on its own right, this data is introduced into the 
output of the program (i.e. the reports). Moreover, this data is a 
sustantiable part of the report.

As far as I see, a report of a vulnerability assessment tool without 
detailed information of the discovered vulnerability, impact, 
remediation, and links to external sources is not really useful. It 
would be not more than lines saying "found vulnerability XYZ in system 
0 in port A" which,  even if it useful for an auditor, leaves him an 
enormous amount of work related to: digging vulnerability impact, risk 
involved, more details in order to weed out false positives....

Regards

Javier

[1] http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm
[2] http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html#TOCGPL

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