Re: [NSE] New class of scripts -- New Net Rules proposal

[Patrick Donnelly <batrick () batbytes com>]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:42 AM, Djalal Harouni <tixxdz () gmail com> wrote:
> 7) The Action function:
> -----------------------
> o Since new NSE scripts can run at different times, the action function
> must know when it has been called, because some scripts can have
> different behaviours especially when they have multiple netrules.
> e.g: A whois script which have a netrule_pre and a netrule_post rules
> will run at the beginning and sets a registry value to tell the whois
> hostrule script to save the results onto the registry, after that the
> first whois script will run at the end (netrule_post) and collects/report
> the final results (e.g: unique contact details). Having two different
> scripts, a pre-scan one and a post-scan script to do this seems to me
> rediculous.
>
> o The action function receives two arguments:
>  * A net table argument.
>  * Another string argument "netrule_pre" or "netrule_post", in this case
>  if there are scripts with more than one netrule the action will know
>  when it has been called.
>
> o This feature of a script which can have multiple netrules must not be
> abused, if the action code differes a lot from when the script is in the
> pre-scan mode and in the post-scan mode, then the best solution is to
> have two different scripts each one with a netrule.

An idea we floated around in the NSE meeting was to change a rule
function to return its action function instead of a boolean. This
enables different action functions for each different rule (a script
can have multiple rule functions). A nice aspect of this change is the
ability to keep backwards compatibility: if the rule function returns
the boolean true --> use the global action function. This would remove
the need to make the action function aware of when it runs through an
extra argument.

-- 
- Patrick Donnelly
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