Category Archives: Vulnerability Management

Masking Vulnerability Scan reports

Masking Vulnerability Scan reports. Continuing the series of posts about Kenna (“Analyzing Vulnerability Scan data“, “Connectors and REST API“) and similar services. Is it actually safe to send your vulnerability data to some external cloud service for analysis? Leakage of such information can potentially cause great damage to your organization, right?

Masking Vulnerability Scans

It’s once again a problem of trust to vendor. IMHO, in some cases it may make sense to hide the real hostnames and ip-addresses of the target hosts in scan reports. So, it would be clear for analysis vendor that some critical vulnerability exists somewhere, but it would not be clear where exactly.

To do this, each hostname/ip-address should be replaced to some values of similar type and should be replaced on the same value each time. So the algorithms of Kenna-like service could work with this masked reports. This mean that we need to create a replacement dictionary.

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Tenable University: Nessus Certificate of Proficiency

Tenable University: Nessus Certificate of Proficiency. Yesterday I finished “Nessus Certificate of Proficiency” learning plan at Tenable University and passed the final test. Here I would like to share my impressions.

Nessus Certificate test completed

First of all, few words about my motivation. I use Nessus literally every day at work. So, it was fun to check my knowledge. I already wrote about Tenable education portal in “Study Vulnerability Assessment in Tenable University for free” post. It’s free. It’s available for everyone on demand. However, Tenable customers get access to way more content.

At this moment there are four learning plan available for Tenable customers: for Nessus, Tenable.io, SecurityCenter and SecurityCenter Continuous View. Each learning plan consist of short video lessons grouped in courses and the final test.

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Kenna Security: Connectors and REST API

Kenna Security: Connectors and REST API. In the last post about Kenna Security cloud service I mentioned their main features for analyzing data from different vulnerability scanners. Now let’s see how to import Tenable Nessus scan results in Kenna. Here you can see the list of connectors for all supported products:

Kenna connectors

Three connectors for Nessus are available:

  • Nessus Importer retrieves existing scan results from your Nessus server.
  • Nessus Scanner can schedule scans on your Nessus server.
  • Nessus XML imports xml (.Nessus2) files.

First two connectors work with Nessus server directly. And they probably won’t work anymore with Nessus Professional 7, because of API removing (see “New Nessus 7 Professional and the end of cost-effective Vulnerability Management (as we knew it)“). If Nessus server is deployed on-premise you should use special Kenna Virtual Tunnel.

Last “Nessus XML” connector is the most flexible. No matter how you got your scan results, it will be possible to import them to Kenna. See how to get XML reports from from Nessus server in a post “Retrieving scan results through Nessus API“.  You can upload XML scan results using Kenna web GUI (not very efficient way, but for testing – why not?) or REST API.

To use Kenna REST API you will need an Application Token. Go to the the Settings menu -> Applications:

Kenna settings

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Nessus Manager disappeared and Tenable.io On-Prem was announced

Nessus Manager disappeared and Tenable.io On-Prem was announced. If you open Tenable Products page right now you will not see Nessus Manager there anymore.  Nessus Manager page “The Power of Nessus for Teams” was also deleted.

Tenable products

However, it is still mentioned in the product comparison. Agent-Based Scanning in SecurityCenter and SecurityCenter Continuous View “* Requires Tenable.io Vulnerability Management or Nessus Manager for agent management.”

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Vulners Web Vulnerability Scanner plugin for Google Chrome v. 2.0

Vulners Web Vulnerability Scanner plugin for Google Chrome v. 2.0. Vulners Team released today the second version of their Web Vulnerability Scanning plugin for Google Chrome browser. You can read my description of the version 1.0 at “Vulners.com vulnerability detection plugins for Burp Suite and Google Chrome“.

Vulners web vulnerability scanner v.2.0

Killing feature of Vulners web scanner v. 2.0 is that you can now see all vulnerabilities on all scanned sites in a single window. You don’t need to checks all Google Chrome tabs manually.

Moreover, if some sites make request to other servers, for example googleapis.com, these servers will be checked automatically.

The plugin was fully refactored and now it is React driven. It works faster, analysis more data sources and detects vulnerabilities more accurately.

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Kenna Security: Analyzing Vulnerability Scan data

Kenna Security: Analyzing Vulnerability Scan data. I’ve been following Kenna Security (before 2015 Risk I/O) for a pretty long time. Mainly, because they do the things I do on a daily basis: analyse various vulnerability scan results and feeds, and prioritize detected vulnerabilities for further mitigation. The only difference is that my scripts and reports are highly specific for my employer’s infrastructure and needs. And guys from Kenna team make a standardized scalable cloud solution that should be suitable for everyone.

I think their niche is really great. They do not compete directly with Vulnerability Management vendors. They can be partners with any of them, bringing additional features to the customers. Perfect win-win combination. That’s why Kenna speakers regularly participate in joint webinars with VM vendors.

I couldn’t lose a great opportunity to see Kenna Security service in action. 😉

In this post I will try to make a very brief review of Kenna functionality and formulate pros and cons of the solution.

When you submit trial request at https://www.eu.kennasecurity.com/signup (or https://app.kennasecurity.com/signup if you are not in Europe) you will get a link to your company account:

https://corporation.eu.kennasecurity.com/

The login screen will look like this:

Kenna login

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Tracking changes in CERT bulletins and Nessus plugins using Vulners Time Machine

Tracking changes in CERT bulletins and Nessus plugins using Vulners Time Machine. If you use Vulners.com vulnerability search engine, you probably know that it has a real “Time Machine”.

Vulners Time Machine cases

Each time Vulners sees some changes on a source page it creates a new version of security object. And you can see the full history of changes in a nice GUI:

Vulners Time Machine

In most cases, the vendor just corrects typos or adds more details. But sometimes the message can change significantly.

CERT.org

CERT.org Meltdown and Spectre

For example, in a case of latest Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability. Initial cert.org VU:584653 recommendation was “Replace CPU hardware”. 🙂

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