Objective Changes to the permissions on files could block security settings from being applied. Changes to the permissions on files could leak sensitive information. Changes to the permissions on files could lead to a system compromise. Audit files. Manual audit with powershell View the permission on the application log file with powershell get-acl "C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\WINEVT\LOGS\application.evtx" | fl […]
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Objective: Resolved the error “PASSWORD_COMPLEXITY_UNSUPPORTED_ON_AGENT” when running a Windows auditfile via a Nessus Agent.
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Nessus Output: Description The remote host is missing one or more of the following Microsoft updates: KB2871997, KB2973351, KB2975625, KB2982378, KB2984972, KB2984976, KB2984981, KB2973501, or KB3126593. These updates are needed to improve the protection against possible credential theft. - For Windows 7 / 2008 R2 : KB2984972, KB2871997, KB2982378, and KB2973351 are required; also, KB2984976 […]
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Objective Monitor Windows Services with Nessus via auditfile
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Objective: Audit “Advanced Audit Policy Configuration Settings” Hardening / Configuring “Advanced Audit Policy Configuration Settings”
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Objective: Audit “User Rights Assignment” Hardening / Configuring “User Rights Assignment”
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Nessus Output: Description The remote service accepts connections encrypted using SSL 2.0 and/or SSL 3.0. These versions of SSL are affected by several cryptographic flaws. An attacker can exploit these flaws to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks or to decrypt communications between the affected service and clients. NIST has determined that SSL 3.0 is no longer acceptable […]
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Nessus Output: Description The remote host supports SSLv2 and therefore may be affected by a vulnerability that allows a cross-protocol Bleichenbacher padding oracle attack known as DROWN (Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption). This vulnerability exists due to a flaw in the Secure Sockets Layer Version 2 (SSLv2) implementation, and it allows captured TLS […]
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Nessus Output: Description The remote host allows SSL/TLS connections with one or more Diffie-Hellman moduli less than or equal to 1024 bits. Through cryptanalysis, a third party may be able to find the shared secret in a short amount of time (depending on modulus size and attacker resources). This may allow an attacker to recover […]
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Nessus Output Description The remote Windows host supports Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol version 1. It is, therefore, affected by an unspecified remote code execution vulnerability that allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Note that this vulnerability is one of multiple Equation Group vulnerabilities and exploits disclosed by a group known as […]
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Objective Target your Nessus Auditfile checks to a specific OU or DC
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Objective Resolve this finding
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Objective Resolve this finding
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Objective Resolve this finding
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Objective Perform a credentialed scan without errors
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Objective Monitor file integrity by generating a hash and verify it with Nessus
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Objective Monitor file integrity by generating a hash and verify it with Nessus
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Nessus Output Description The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer medium strength encryption. Nessus regards medium strength as any encryption that uses key lengths at least 56 bits and less than 112 bits, or else that uses the 3DES encryption suite. Note that it is considerably easier to circumvent medium strength […]
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Objective Target your Nessus Auditfile checks to a specific version of IIS.
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Best practice for systems running IIS, part of Hardening IIS:
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Interesting article on how to dump memory from the Nessus Deamon and extract the credentials that are defined in the scans/policies. Extracting Saved Credentials From a Pwn3d Nessus System
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Objective Identify and remediate failed scans in Nessus / Security Center.
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Nessus Output Synopsis : The remote web server does not take steps to mitigate a class of web application vulnerabilities. Description : The remote web server in some responses sets a permissive Content-Security-Policy (CSP) response header or does not set one at all. The CSP header has been proposed by the W3C Web Application Security […]
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Nessus Output The remote web server reveals the physical path of the webroot when a nonexistent page is requested. While printing errors to the output is useful for debugging applications, this feature should be disabled on production servers.
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment and when performing the Fingerprint Web Server (Passive) and Fingerprint Web Server (Active) Tests.
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Nessus Output Description The remote DNS server responds to queries for third-party domains that do not have the recursion bit set. This may allow a remote attacker to determine which domains have recently been resolved via this name server, and therefore which hosts have been recently visited. For instance, if an attacker was interested in […]
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Account Policies are settings related to The Password Policy The Account Lockout Policy
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Objective Changes to the permissions on group policy registry keys could block security settings from being applied. Audit these registry keys (and subkeys).
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Nessus Output Synopsis : The remote device supports LLMNR. Description : The remote device answered to a Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) request. This protocol provides a name lookup service similar to NetBIOS or DNS. It is enabled by default on modern Windows versions. Reported Risk factor by Nessus: None In my option the severity should […]
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Objective Resolve error
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Steps to harden Google Chrome: Updating Google Chrome Review best practices Configure Group Policy settings
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Nessus Output It appears KB3123479 has not been installed since the following registry key does not exist and/or does not contain any of the following values : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Cryptography\OID\EncodingType 0\CertDllCreateCertificateChainEngine\Config\default WeakSha1ThirdPartyFlags WeakSha1ThirdPartyAfterTime
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment. But also Nessus will report this issue during your scanning phase.
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment. But also Nessus will report this issue during your scanning phase.
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment. But also Nikto and Nessus will report this issue during your scanning phase.
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment. But also Nikto and Nessus will report this issue during your scanning phase.
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You probably gonna find this issue in your manual browsing and spidering phase of your assessment. But also Nikto and Nessus will report this issue during your scanning phase.
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Nessus Output Description Some daemon processes on the remote host are associated with programs that have been installed manually. System administration best practice dictates that an operating system’s native package management tools be used to manage software installation, updates, and removal whenever possible.
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Nessus Output Description The remote SSH server is configured to allow either MD5 or 96-bit MAC algorithms, both of which are considered weak. Note that this plugin only checks for the options of the SSH server, and it does not check for vulnerable software versions.
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Nessus Output Description The SSH server is configured to support Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) encryption. This may allow an attacker to recover the plaintext message from the ciphertext. Note that this plugin only checks for the options of the SSH server and does not check for vulnerable software versions.
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Nessus Output Description Nessus has detected that the remote SSH server is configured to use the Arcfour stream cipher or no cipher at all. RFC 4253 advises against using Arcfour due to an issue with weak keys.
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Nessus Output Description The version of Windows running on the remote host is affected by a vulnerability in the HTTP protocol stack (HTTP.sys) due to improperly parsing crafted HTTP requests. A remote attacker can exploit this to execute arbitrary code with System privileges.
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Tools … that can be used to perform SMB enumeration.
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Resources used for auditing and hardening of Netapp devices:
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Resources used for auditing and hardening of Brocade devices:
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What is vFeed Cross Linked and Aggregated Local Vulnerability Database https://github.com/toolswatch/vFeed http://www.vfeed.io/
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Nessus Output Description The remote host supports IPMI v2.0. The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol is affected by an information disclosure vulnerability due to the support of RMCP+ Authenticated Key-Exchange Protocol (RAKP) authentication. A remote attacker can obtain password hash information for valid user accounts via the HMAC from a RAKP message 2 response […]
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Description A virtualization manager is a virtualization environment management application that provides capabilities to create, edit, remove and monitor virtual machines. A virtualization manager provides a complete management solution for many different virtual machines simultaneously through a single application management console. A virtualization manager is also known as a virtual machine manager, a virtual machine […]
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Description VMware vRealize Suite is a software product suite designed to enable IT professionals to create and manage hybrid clouds. The vRealize Suite bundles existing management software, including IT Business Management Suite, vCloud Automation Center (vCAC), vCenter Operations Management Suite and vCenter LogInsight.
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Nessus Output Description The copy of ‘sethc.exe’ in the Windows ‘System32’ directory on the remote host appears to have been modified, perhaps for use as a backdoor. Either or both of the ‘InternalName’ or ‘OriginalFilename’ file attributes no longer match the original file.
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Objective I couldn’t find a script editor that recognizes the Nessus .audit file keywords and syntax so I’m working on a user defined language definition file for Notepad++.
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Nessus Output Description Signing is not required on the remote SMB server. An unauthenticated, remote attacker can exploit this to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks against the SMB server.
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You can use ‘if then else’ logic in your Nessus auditfile to: target your checks to specific applications, versions, roles/features, environments. check conditions that are required to run the check, for example the availability of commands, file/directory, service/daemon, open port, running executable, installed package etc. minimize the number of auditfiles by implementing condition blocks
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Starter templates for Nessus auditfile….
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I’ve noticed a few changes after installing the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that breaks the credentialed scans with Nessus. The local administrator account is disabled (it was enabled before the update). The remote registry service is disabled (it was enabled before the update). I’ve run a credentialed scan after enabling both settings again. The anniversary update restored […]
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Objective Resolve the error condition “POWERSHELL_NO_RESULT: powershell command returned no result” in the Nessus auditfile for Windows.
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Objective Resolve the error “POWERSHELL_REG_FAILURE: Could not determine powershell location in the registry” when running a compliance scan on Windows
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Objective Nessus has many plugins but it is not checking all applications that are installed. So we want to be able to create a simple version check with a Nessus auditfile for Windows applications.
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Objective Read a .nessus file (hosts properties, vulnerability and compliance scan results) into excel.
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Objective Determine which new Nessus plugins where downloaden during the last sync Determine what has changed in the Nessus plugins Having a backup of all the Nessus plugins before synchronization
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Nessus Scanning a Cisco ACS with credentials (ssh) is currently not fully supported:
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Description IBM Domino (formerly IBM Lotus Domino) is an platform for hosting social business applications.
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Description Postfix Admin is a Web Based Management tool created for Postfix.
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Description PHP is a programming language commonly used for web applications.
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Description QEMU is a processor emulator that is available for various platforms.
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Objective Find systems running 7-zip. Identify the running version. Determine if the running version has known vulnerabilities.
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Nessus You can use Nessus to detect PuTTY installations and vulnerabilities: PuTTY Detection (57364) The plugin output shows the path and the version.
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Nessus You can use Nessus to detect VMware Tools: Microsoft Windows Installed Software Enumeration (credentialed check) (20811) SNMP Query Installed Software Disclosure (19763) There are currently no version checking / vulnerability plugins. A manual vulnerability assessment is required.
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Nessus You can use Nessus to detect TortoiseSVN: Subversion Client/Server Detection (Windows) (40619) Microsoft Windows Installed Software Enumeration (credentialed check) (20811) SNMP Query Installed Software Disclosure (19763) There are currently no version checking / vulnerability plugins. A manual vulnerability assessment is required.
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References: The Nessus Attack Scripting Language Reference Guide The NASL2 reference manual Writing NASL Scripts Book: Nessus, Snort, & Ethereal Power Tools: Customizing Open Source Security Tools Book: Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit, Volume 1 Book: Nessus Network Auditing NASL Language Definition for Notepad++
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Nessus Output KB 3000483 or a related, subsequent update was successfully installed, but the GPO setting "Hardened UNC Paths" has not been enabled.
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Nessus Output On Windows 10 the following output is recorded even if all Windows updates are applied. - C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Deployment.dll has not been patched. Remote version : 2.0.50727.8670 Should be : 2.0.50727.8671
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Nessus Output Nessus determined the workaround is not being used because the following registry value does not exist : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Windows\Sidebar\TurnOffSidebar
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Nessus Description The registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\CachedLogonsCount is non-null. It means that the remote host locally caches the passwords of the users when they log in, in order to continue to allow the users to log in in the case of the failure of the PDC.
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Nessus Output The workaround to disable SSL 3.0 for all server software installed on the remote host has not been applied. The workaround to disable SSL 3.0 for all client software installed on the remote host has not been applied.
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Nessus Output The following registry values have not been set to 1 : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727\SchUseStrongCrypto HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727\SchUseStrongCrypto
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Nessus Output ASLR hardening settings for Internet Explorer in KB3125869 have not been applied. The following DWORD keys must be created with a value of 1: - HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_ALLOW_USER32_EXCEPTION_HANDLER_HARDENING\iexplore.exe - HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_ALLOW_USER32_EXCEPTION_HANDLER_HARDENING\iexplore.exe
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References Nessus Cloud Documentation Nessus Cloud Login Portal
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References used to develop Nessus Auditfiles for Checkpoint:
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Auditfiles: Tenable currently provides 3 Nessus auditfiles to audit Microsoft Azure: TNS_Microsoft_Azure_Best_Practices-Databases.audit TNS_Microsoft_Azure_Best_Practices-Infrastructure.audit TNS_Microsoft_Azure_Best_Practices-Websites.audit
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Objective When you develop and test many compliance checks for Nessus auditfiles and want a quick and easy way to test these checks… read on.
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References: Nessus Release Notes Nessus Support Portal Nessus Product Page Nessus Plugins Tenable Discussion Forum Tenable Security Advisories Vulnerabilities: CVE Details
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Best practices and references used for hardening MS SQL
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References used to harden and audit Vmware
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Resources used for creating custom Nessus Auditfile for Red Hat Enterprise:
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I’m working on a custom Linux auditfile with Oracle checks. I want this audit file to be generic, so no hardcoded instance names in the auditfile.
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Issue The default Nessus\CIS auditfiles for MS SQL are split up in OS level and Database level auditfiles. This results in at-least 2 auditfile per instance which you have to schedule in 2 jobs. This is not a scalable solution.
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