Week 3 Lab
Jonathan Hanning
IS/3110
James Hollis
April 1, 2015
1.) What are the differences between ZeNmap GUI (Nmap) and Nessus?
NMAP is primarily a host detection and port discovery tool. Instead of using Nessus to look for specific vulnerabilities against a known quantity of hosts, NMAP discovers active IP hosts using a combination of probes. On the other hand Nessus takes the open ports into account and notifies you if these port shave potential security vulnerabilities attached to them. Nessus is typically installed on a server and runs as a web-based application. Nessus uses plugins to determine if vulnerability is present on a specified machine.
2.) Which scanning application is better for performing a network discovery reconnaissance probing of an IP network infrastructure?
In SSIDer is a Wi-Fi network scanner for the 32-bit and64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, and 7. It is free and open source. The software uses the current wireless card or a wireless USB adapter and supports most GPS devices (namely those that use NMEA 2.3 or higher). Its graphical user interface shows MAC address, SSID, signal strength, hardware brand, security, and network type of nearby Wi-Fi networks. It can also track the strength of the signals and show them in a time graph.
Which scanning application is better for performing a software vulnerability assessment with suggested remediation steps?
The annual SANS Top 20 classifies most of these dangerous holes for both Windows and Unix, and prescribes best practices for patching and remediation. Also, the SANS Top 20 arranges vulnerabilities into 10 classes for each platform with categories of vulnerabilities within them.
While Nessus provides suggestions for remediation steps, what else does Nessus provide that can help you assess the risk impact of the identified software vulnerability? Through passive monitoring, PVS can reveal devices and software on the network that are not authorized, or that...