RE: vulnerability scanners not effective? or just a false-positive?

From: David Ball (lostinvietnam@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2006 - 00:23:38 EST


Joel
First things first. You should really bring any gaping security holes that
you identify early in the pen-test engagement to the attention of the client
and stop all testing until the issue can be properly addressed. From your
wording it seems that the hole is pretty big. Also you typically have a
communication process agreed up front with the client where you confirm that
the client is ok to proceed with you exploiting a vuln service. Hopefully
they give you the ok but it's not uncommon for a client to be satisfied with
the "this is what we could do". Having said that the less restrictions on
you the better from both parties point of view as it makes for a more
realistic pen-test.

David.
>
>"Joel Jose" <joeljose420@BonBon.net>
>No Phone Info Available
>03/30/2006 12:03 AM
>
>To
><pen-test@securityfocus.com>
>cc
>
>Subject
>vulnerability scanners not effective? or just a false-positive?

>hy ppl,
> i was pen-testing a network. First i do a manual check with my
>own methods, i use nmap,hping,metasploit,telnet,dig,whois..etc and then
>for the confirmation i scan with nessus, just to be sure that i havent
>overlooked any. But, today something very strange happened; i found a huge
>vulnerability which could drastically compramise the network. The
>directories were not protected. I could easily access the template
>directory, and view the internal directory structure. I even got access to
>a few files, which contained backup data of some of thier old employees.
>now, if i had "known" the names of the *important* diectories, i am sure i
>would have been able to access them as a piece of cake. Ofcourse the
>network is
>safe as long as the attacker doesnt "learn" the name of the important
>directories. But i think it is a very "huge" vulnerability. and nessus
>didnt even give a hinch!!
>
>and one more quest. How many of you think that the existance of the
>default
>banners in services(eg apache default error pages) are a security threat,
>if
>not high, atleast medium?. I do.
>
>joel.
>
>
>
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service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm).
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