OpenVAS: Open Vulnerability Assessment System
September 16, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. The actual security scanner is accompanied with a daily updated feed of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs), over 18.000 in total (as of August 2010). All OpenVAS products are Free Software and mostly licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
Website: http://www.openvas.org/
Overlook: network and Service discovery tool
July 10, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
Born from the ashes of Look@LAN, Fing is the ultimate command line tool for network and service discovery. Taking advantage of a brand new cross-platform network engine, it reaches an impressive discovery sharpness and speed. Whether you’re a Look@LAN user or not, do not miss the chance to take a ride on Fing; it’s definitely worth it! You’re going to discover your whole network in few seconds and generate customized real-time reports.
- Network discovery with 100% hit in any ethernet-based network
- Supported operating systems: Linux, Mac OS (Snow Leopard included), Windows (Vista and Windows 7 included)
- MAC address gathering
- Faster and smarter than Look@LAN
Website: http://www.over-look.com
Interesting Article: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/discover-all-devices-including-those-behind-firewalls-with-fing/
Angry IP: Very fast IP address and port scanner
March 7, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
Angry IP scanner is a very fast IP address and port scanner.
It can scan IP addresses in any range as well as any their ports. It is cross-platform and lightweight. Not requiring any installations, it can be freely copied and used anywhere.
Angry IP scanner simply pings each IP address to check if it’s alive, then optionally it is resolving its hostname, determines the MAC address, scans ports, etc. The amount of gathered data about each host can be extended with plugins.
It also has additional features, like NetBIOS information (computer name, workgroup name, and currently logged in Windows user), favorite IP address ranges, web server detection, customizable openers, etc.
Scanning results can be saved to CSV, TXT, XML or IP-Port list files. With help of plugins, Angry IP Scanner can gather any information about scanned IPs. Anybody who can write Java code is able to write plugins and extend functionality of Angry IP Scanner.
Website: http://www.angryip.org
AWStats: Free powerful log analyzer
March 4, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
AWStats is a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically. This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages. It uses a partial information file to be able to process large log files, often and quickly. It can analyze log files from all major server tools like Apache log files (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF log format or common/CLF log format), WebStar, IIS (W3C log format) and a lot of other web, proxy, wap, streaming servers, mail servers and some ftp servers.
Website: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
Kerberos: Network authentication protocol
February 22, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography. A free implementation of this protocol is available from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kerberos is available in many commercial products as well.
The Internet is an insecure place. Many of the protocols used in the Internet do not provide any security. Tools to “sniff” passwords off of the network are in common use by malicious hackers. Thus, applications which send an unencrypted password over the network are extremely vulnerable. Worse yet, other client/server applications rely on the client program to be “honest” about the identity of the user who is using it. Other applications rely on the client to restrict its activities to those which it is allowed to do, with no other enforcement by the server.
Some sites attempt to use firewalls to solve their network security problems. Unfortunately, firewalls assume that “the bad guys” are on the outside, which is often a very bad assumption. Most of the really damaging incidents of computer crime are carried out by insiders. Firewalls also have a significant disadvantage in that they restrict how your users can use the Internet. (After all, firewalls are simply a less extreme example of the dictum that there is nothing more secure then a computer which is not connected to the network — and powered off!) In many places, these restrictions are simply unrealistic and unacceptable.
Website: http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/
TrueCrypt: On-the-fly-encrypted volume
February 15, 2010 by christian · Leave a Comment
TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).
Files can be copied to and from a mounted TrueCrypt volume just like they are copied to/from any normal disk (for example, by simple drag-and-drop operations). Files are automatically being decrypted on the fly (in memory/RAM) while they are being read or copied from an encrypted TrueCrypt volume. Similarly, files that are being written or copied to the TrueCrypt volume are automatically being encrypted on the fly (right before they are written to the disk) in RAM. Note that this does not mean that the whole file that is to be encrypted/decrypted must be stored in RAM before it can be encrypted/decrypted. There are no extra memory (RAM) requirements for TrueCrypt
Website: http://www.truecrypt.org/



