Detecting known host security flaws over a network connection

Abstract

To test if a host contains any known security flaws over a network connection a Vulnerability Assessment (VA) could be used. This thesis describes different techniques used by VA tools over a network connection to detect known security flaws. To decrease the risk of flaws not being detected, several VA tools could be used. In this paper firstly types of vulnerabilities are discussed and also the impacts of different vulnerabilities are pointed out. This paper mainly focuses on two different categories of VA tool, Port Scanner and Vulnerability Scanner. As an example of port scanner this paper discusses about Nmap port scanner and as vulnerability scanner it discusses about Nessus. Both these tools are open source VA tools. This paper contains the scan reports using these tools over a range of IP addresses. The analysis part of this paper gives an idea about how these tools scan for security flaws and suggest solutions to make a host or network out of risk.