Sorry Renaud for posting this here as well, but I'd like other people to 
comment on this as well.

Today I found out why Nessus is so sparse with reporting OpenSSH issues. 
It is because backport.inc has entries like this:

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.1p1";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.4p1";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.5p1";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.6.1p2";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.7.1p2";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.8p1";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

backported_versions[i++]   = "OpenSSH_3.9p1";
real_versions[j++]         = "OpenSSH_3.9.99";

This effectively maps almost all openssh 3.x version strings to 3.9.99 
unless you set report_paranoia to 2 (=Paranoid). There are similar 
entries in backport.inc for Apache.

My argument is that backport.inc was meant to map vendor 
(Debian/SuSE/Red Hat) version strings to real product version strings. 
So when you see "SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.3p2 Debian-9" you know that this is 
Debian openssl-client package 4.3p2-9 which is really openssh 4.4p1. 
However, with the above examples, there is no indication whatsoever that 
these versions are patched or even belong to a vendor that supplies a patch.

Renaud's answer is that changing backport.inc would create too many 
false positives, and that you can always set report_paranoia=2 if you 
don't like it. My reply is that now you get a lot of false negatives 
which is a lot worse (and not what the report_paranoia was designed for).

What do you think?

Please read the full report and Renaud's answers before answering: 
http://bugs.nessus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643

Sincerely,

Richard van den Berg
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