Learning Nessus for Penetration Testing
Год: 2014
Автор: Himanshu Kumar
Жанр: Тестирование ПО
Издательство: Packt Publishing
ISBN: 978-1783550999
Язык: Английский
Формат: PDF
Качество: Изначально компьютерное (eBook)
Количество страниц: 116
Описание:
IT security is a vast and exciting domain, with vulnerability assessment and penetration testing being the most important and commonly performed security activities across organizations today. The Nessus tool gives the end user the ability to perform these kinds of security tests quickly and effectively.
Nessus is a widely used tool for vulnerability assessment, and Learning Nessus for Penetration Testing gives you a comprehensive insight into the use of this tool. This book is a step-by-step guide that will teach you about the various options available in the Nessus vulnerability scanner tool so you can conduct a vulnerability assessment that helps to identify exposures in IT infrastructure quickly and efficiently. This book will also give you an insight into penetration testing and how to conduct compliance checks using Nessus.
This book starts off with an introduction to vulnerability assessment and penetration testing before moving on to show you the steps needed to install Nessus on Windows and Linux platforms.
Throughout the course of this book, you will learn about the various administrative options available in Nessus such as how to create a new user. You will also learn about important concepts like how to analyze results to remove false positives and criticality. At the end of this book, you will also be introduced to the compliance check feature of Nessus and given an insight into how it is different from regular vulnerability scanning.
Learning Nessus for Penetration Testing teaches you everything you need to know about how to perform VA/PT effectively using Nessus to secure your IT infrastructure and to meet compliance requirements in an effective and efficient manner.
Learning Nessus for Penetration Testing is ideal for security professionals and network administrators who wish to learn how to use Nessus to conduct vulnerability assessments to identify vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure quickly and efficiently.
Оглавление
Chapter 1: Fundamentals 5
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing 6
Need for Vulnerability Assessment 7
Risk prevention 7
Compliance requirements 7
The life cycles of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing 7
Stage 1 – scoping 9
Stage 2 – information gathering 10
Stage 3 – vulnerability scanning 11
Stage 4 – false positive analysis 11
Stage 5 – vulnerability exploitation
(Penetration Testing) 11
Stage 6 – report generation 12
Introduction to Nessus 12
Initial Nessus setup 13
Scheduling scans 14
The Nessus plugin 14
Patch management using Nessus 15
Governance, risk, and compliance checks using Nessus 15
Installing Nessus on different platforms 15
Prerequisites 16
Installing Nessus on Windows 7 16
Installing Nessus on Linux 22
Definition update 24
Online plugin updates 25
Offline plugin updates 26
Custom plugins feed host-based updates 27
User management 27
Adding a new user 28
Deleting an existing user 29
Changing the password or role of an
existing user 29
Nessus system configuration 30
General Settings 30
SMTP settings 31
Web proxy settings 31
Feed Settings 31
Mobile Settings 32
ActiveSync (Exchange) 33
Apple Profile Manager 33
Good For Enterprise 34
Result Settings 34
Advanced Settings 35
Summary 40
Chapter 2: Scanning 41
Scan prerequisites 41
Scan-based target system admin credentials 42
Direct connectivity without a firewall 42
Scanning window to be agreed upon 42
Scanning approvals and related paper work 42
Backup of all systems including data and configuration 43
Updating Nessus plugins 43
Creating a scan policy as per target system OS and information 43
Configuring a scan policy to check for an organization's security policy
compliance 43
Gathering information of target systems 44
Sufficient network bandwidth to run the scan 44
Target system support staff 44
Policy configuration 44
Default policy settings 45
New policy creation 46
General Settings 46
Credentialed scan 49
Plugins 53
Preferences 55
Scan configuration 56
Configuring a new scan 56
General settings 56
E-mail settings 58
Scan execution and results 58
Summary 60
Chapter 3: Scan Analysis 61
Result analysis 62
Report interpretation 62
Hosts Summary (Executive) 62
Vulnerabilities By Host 63
Vulnerabilities By Plugin 65
False positive analysis 67
Understanding an organizations' environment 68
Target-critical vulnerabilities 68
Proof of concept 68
Port scanning tools 68
Effort estimation 68
Vulnerability analysis 69
False positives 69
Risk severity 70
Applicability analysis 71
Fix recommendations 71
Vulnerability exploiting 72
Exploit example 1 72
Exploit example 2 74
Exploit example 3 76
Summary 77
Chapter 4: Reporting Options 79
Vulnerability Assessment report 79
Nessus report generation 80
Report filtering option 83
Nessus report content 84
Report customization 86
Report automation 89
Summary 90
Chapter 5: Compliance Checks 91
Audit policies 92
Compliance reporting 94
Auditing infrastructure 95
Windows compliance check 95
Windows File Content 96
Unix compliance check 96
Cisco IOS compliance checks 96
Database compliance checks 97
PCI DSS compliance 97
VMware vCenter/vSphere Compliance Check 97
Summary 98
Index 99
