Book Image

Network Scanning Cookbook

By : Sairam Jetty
Book Image

Network Scanning Cookbook

By: Sairam Jetty

Overview of this book

Network scanning is a discipline of network security that identifies active hosts on networks and determining whether there are any vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Nessus and Nmap are among the top tools that enable you to scan your network for vulnerabilities and open ports, which can be used as back doors into a network. Network Scanning Cookbook contains recipes for configuring these tools in your infrastructure that get you started with scanning ports, services, and devices in your network. As you progress through the chapters, you will learn how to carry out various key scanning tasks, such as firewall detection, OS detection, and access management, and will look at problems related to vulnerability scanning and exploitation in the network. The book also contains recipes for assessing remote services and the security risks that they bring to a network infrastructure. By the end of the book, you will be familiar with industry-grade tools for network scanning, and techniques for vulnerability scanning and network protection.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Introducing configuration audits

A configuration audit is an information security procedure where you prepare a baseline configuration, and then compare this with the current configuration to perform a gap analysis, later working on closing those gaps to get as close as possible to the baseline configuration. This process of closing the gaps and achieving a maximum hardened state is called risk or vulnerability mitigation.

Most companies and organizations rely on strong configurations to ensure security in their systems. A well hardened and patched system is a nightmare for a hacker to break into. As many companies opt to move their operations to the cloud, configuration plays a great role in security now more than ever. A simple lapse in a network device, allowing default users to log in, would help a hacker gain access to a whole network in minutes.

A regular application has...