Certification Magazine - October 2007 - (Page 35)

The commercial applications of such a tool are not merely limited to SensePost’s own consultants, and as a result, the BiDiBLAH tool is available to administrators on a subscription basis. The framework of SensePost tools are examined in the Certified Ethical Hacker exam, as the tools integrate several core security functions such as operating system and application fingerprinting, remote vulnerability scanning, DNS and NetBlock walking and other concepts. For more information, visit http://www.sensepost.com/research/bidiblah/. NMap The NMap security scanner has been available as an open-source product for years. Originally developed as a command-line UNIX/Linux tool over the years, it has been adapted to Windows and extended to include the ability to export reporting in various modern formats, including XML and HTML. At its core, NMap is an administration tool that rapidly scans enterprise networks. NMap works principally by using remote port probes and service requests to identify the operating system and what services are available on the target computer. One key feature that sets NMap apart as a critical component of the administrator’s toolbox is the flexibility of the scanning engine — each scan can be customized to scan individual computers or ranges of addresses, to load addresses from a file or to scan a specific DNS name (resolving the name in the process). Once the target has been specified, an administrator with appropriate rights to the source system (that from which the scan is being run) can choose from several different attack methods, each originating differently on the source system and can use different features of the underlying network protocol. To evade intrusion prevention either on the remote system or on the network itself, the administrator can specify the speed at which probes are run, as well as how the system handles situations in which attacks are dropped before making it to the target. As a result of NMap’s granular control and flexibility as an operating system fingerprinting and portscanning tool, an administrator can quickly find out whether there are vulnerable or unauthorized services somewhere in the network environment. For more information, visit http://insecure.org/nmap/ index.html. SolarWinds On first glance, many security consultants would argue that SolarWinds is not really a security tool — it is a suite of network management software, including Engineer’s Toolset, which focuses on network discovery, analysis and diagnostics; Orion Network Performance Monitor, which provides insight into device monitoring across the network; and LANsurveyor, which completes network mapping and documentation. Part of any security assessment is first gathering intelligence on the network that needs to be examined. October 2007 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 35 http://www.sensepost.com/research/bidiblah/ http://insecure.org/nmap/index.html http://insecure.org/nmap/index.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - October 2007

Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Dear Techie Academic Connection Virtual Village Rebooting Your Career Development Inside Certification Forensics Investigators: Cybercrime Fighters Interface Building Your Skills Through Security Tools Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - October 2007

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