To take a cue from the official Nmap documentation, let’s take a look at a very simple NSE script, finger.nse. Many books have been written on the subject, but a good starting place is in the online documentation, more specifically the Lua 5.1 Reference Manual, available for free at. Ironically, lsat supports more versions of Unix than lynis does, including Solaris and AIX.įor those of us who might be interested in delving further into Lua, there are a great number of resources available to us. Another tool is the Linux Security Auditing Tool, or lsat. One such tool, lynis, is available for various Linux distributions as well as some BSD variants. They check things such as file permissions and other insecure configuration settings on Unix systems. These tools are designed to be run on the system that’s being checked no network connections are necessarily initiated. Several tools can examine the security settings of a system from a host-based perspective. Insecure.Org, the folks behind the nmap tool, also maintain a great list of security tools. Many other tools are available for performing network vulnerability assessments. In many cases, Nessus is also capable of confirming a match in the vulnerability database by attempting an exploit however, this is likely to crash the service or even the entire system. This information is compared to a database that lists vulnerabilities known to exist in certain software configurations. It works by looking at various pieces of information about a host on the network, such as detailed version information about the operating system and any software providing services on the network. It’s designed to check for and optionally verify the existence of known security vulnerabilities. Nessus is another free network security tool, though its source code isn’t available. It’s a powerful tool for mapping out the true services being provided on a network. Nmap is a free, open source tool for identifying hosts on a network and the services running on those hosts.

Most of these tools are available on most Unix flavors.

Unix has a rich heritage of tools for performing network vulnerability assessments.

Network-centric vulnerability assessment looks for security weaknesses a system presents to the network. They can be network-centric or host-based. Assessments have become an established best practice, incorporated into many standards and regulations. Mario Santana, in Computer and Information Security Handbook, 2009 Vulnerability AssessmentĪ vulnerability assessment looks for security weaknesses in a system.

What is zenmap used for