Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: Nessus - open or closed source?


From: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson () treachery net>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 08:03:04 -0800 (PST)

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On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, brandon.steili () gmail com wrote:

Sounds about right. Here's a link:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/101305-nessus.html

Quoting from the article:

        "We want to bring Nessus to a larger audience, so
        Nessus 3.0 is going to be closed source, Gula said.
        If its not open source, a lot of government agencies
        and enterprises can use it, where before they wouldnt."

This is absolute nonsense. Many government agencies and private enterprises with clued IT security folks already use Nessus and have for quite some time. In this move, all Tenable has ultimately done is pervert Nessus into a latter-day ISS clone.

This shift toward commercialized closed-source silliness renders any use of Nessus untenable* in my book. I will no more recommend its future use than I would ISS.

- -Jay

* - No pun intended.

   (    (                                                       _______
   ))   ))  .-"There's always time for a good cup of coffee."-.  >====<--.
 C|~~|C|~~| \------ Jay D. Dyson - jdyson () treachery net ------/ |    = |-'
  `--' `--'  `------ Security through obscurity isn't. ------'  `------'

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