I'm not sure what's wrong with using Nmap along with Nessus; I've been doing it (or something very much like it) since the days of tcpspray on BSDi, along side SATAN.
It's handy to use multiple port scanners against a single target, particularly a network, and particularly when the benefits and drawbacks of each dovetail into each other, forming a better solution than either on its own. Against many sorts of targets, Nmap's biggest plus is that if you're fast on the command line, it's lightning fast as a method of sketching out a rough picture of some of the issues you can expect to find in a target, and therefore handy in tweaking a massive, highly detailed (and therefore much slower) Nessus scan to root out specific issues. And to Michel Arboi, I know that opinions are like functional biological excretory valves, but the fact is that different tools are useful for different sorts of jobs, which I'm sure you're aware. I know that you've written a direct (and also free) competitor to Nmap which is in many ways (but not all) superior, and I know that the little ferret behind Nmap didn't allow it's inclusion into Nessus, but that's no reason for sour grapes. I routinely scan a very, very wide variety of sizes and types of networks, and I can tell you without a doubt that Nmap is still very useful, even along side a modern Nessus loaded with nessus_tcp_scanner. For example, it's very nice to be able to plug a crossover cable from a laptop into some kind of beef box and blow out a 5 second command-line Nmap and then wait 15 seconds for a pretty good overview of a few aspects of the situation. In this case, I don't have to worry about being able to talk to my Nessus server from someone else's network on first inspection, and I don't have to make sure I'm running a Nessus server on the laptop. For someone with my sort of job, where I tell clients every day exactly what's wrong with their systems and networks, and I am expected to be *right* 100% of the time, it would be insane to rely solely on one security suite and one methodology. My toolkit consists everything from the shiny, bright, packaged, pretty goodness of Nessus, all the way down to packet shapers and password bruters and everything in between, and that includes Nmap. All of that said, Nessus is an incredibly useful and welcome tool in my collection, and is one of the handful of tools that is used at every site. But it is not the only one, nor should it be relied on consistently to the exclusion of all others, particularly at a site where fixing, rather than merely reporting security holes actually matters. James On May 8, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Mercer, Jeff C - Raleigh, NC wrote: > Considering how wildly popular Nmap is, how widely used it is and the > many advantages to Nmap, I've never understood why Tenable Security is > so dead-set against it. > > Other than the ususal egomania of 'Well I didn't write it so I hate > people using it' crap. > > Yes, many folks have no clue how to correctly use Nmap and use it with > Nessus. You will not eliminate those people nor the noise they create. > It's better to teach and expand knowledge than to restrict and play > power games. > > That being said, an import plugin would be damn useful. > > -------- > Jeff Mercer - CISO - Security Vulnerability Assessments > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michel Arboi >> Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 3:23 AM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: How to correctly modify nmap.nasl? >> >> On Thu, 8 May 2008 11:02:21 +0400 >> "Taras Ivashchenko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> I prefer to use Nmap as scanner's backend using nmap.nasl plugin >>> (http://www.nessus.org/documentation/nmap.nasl). >> >> #mode dead_horse_beating on >> This is certainly a bad idea, for kazillons of reasons that have >> already been exposed here. >> >> I am convinced that we should simplify this plugin and allow only >> imports of Nmap results. That is the only sane way to use it. >> >>> And so we need to replace -P0 with -PN in plugin's source. >> >> And break the plugin with old Nmap? >> >>> And I can't use this plugin :( >> >> Set in nessusd.conf : >> nasl_no_signature_check = yes >> or sign the plugin with your own key, and add it >> to /opt/nessus/var/nessus/ (IIRC) >> >> -- >> http://www.bigfoot.com/~arboi http://ma75.blogspot.com/ >> PGP key ID : 0x0BBABA91 - 0x1320924F0BBABA91 >> Fingerprint: 1048 B09B EEAF 20AA F645 2E1A 1320 924F 0BBA BA91 >> _______________________________________________ >> Nessus mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mail.nessus.org/mailman/listinfo/nessus >> > _______________________________________________ > Nessus mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.nessus.org/mailman/listinfo/nessus _______________________________________________ Nessus mailing list [email protected] http://mail.nessus.org/mailman/listinfo/nessus
