A few months back I did some intense testing of all the best vulnerability scanners out there.. I had a couple unix boxes hooked up, as well as some windows machines, and figured I could add clients to a “once-a-week” scanning contract. So naturally, I wanted to use the scanner that was the best for my purpose.
You might be looking for the article: Top 5 best Vulnerability Port scanners
I tested the following (trying to only list automated vulnerability scanners):
ISS Internet Security Systems
SSS Shadow Security Scanner
Retina eEye
Nessus
GFI Languard Network Security Scanner
Qualys www.qualys.com
Nstealth Security Scanner www.nstalker.com
Nikto
Whisker
Infiltrator infiltration-systems.com
Nscan
I was looking at 3 main areas while evaluating the scanners.
Comprehensiveness of the testing: including how many options are allowed for different scanning, IDS evasion, and types of scans. Also in this category is the availability for the latest exploits and a custom exploit option to allow me to plug in custom exploits.
Quality of the program: included in this category is availability of updates, speed of various variables, efficiency, “smartness” or “AI” of the program while scanning/reporting, security- (does running this version of this vuln scanner leave me vulnerable?), scheduling capabilities, alert and message capabilities, quaility of exploits, reactions to “false positives”, and overall feature and capabilities.
Reporting Capabilities: How easy is it to create a report? The quality and design of the report. The comprehensiveness and personalization of the reports..
My findings
All of these programs can be tested for free, either through an evaluation or trial. I believe that the availability of these programs on the net (cracked versions) represents the conspiracy to aid script-kiddies everywhere so that these companies will then profit after an intrusion (or even a loud scan).
Any of these programs are not to be used for cracking… Nothing serious at least.. using these programs is akin to knocking on every window of a …
