Facebook Google Plus Twitter LinkedIn YouTube RSS Menu Search Resource - BlogResource - WebinarResource - ReportResource - Eventicons_066 icons_067icons_068icons_069icons_070

Tenable Blog

Subscribe

Nessus Reaches Plugin 50000

I am often astonished as to just how many vulnerability checks are included with Nessus. There is something to be said for the scope of the nearly 40,000+ plugins (the numbering of the plugins started at 10001). On October 19, 2010, Nessus plugin number 50,000 was published into the feed. Let's go back and take a look at some of the first plugins:

The "official" first numbered Nessus plugin in the feed is ColdFusion Multiple Vulnerabilities (File Upload/Manipulation) - Plugin ID 10001. I found some interesting information about this vulnerability:

"Although this vulnerability has been known for a while we think it is worse than originally thought. Users can upload and potentially execute files on the web server. Furthermore, few sites seem to have fixed the problem. Major commercial, government, and military sites have been found to still be vulnerable. We hope this advisory helps get the word out to all those webmasters.

-weld"



The reference cited in the plugin points to a Bugtraq mail list posting that reads:

"In issue 54, volume 8 of Phrack Magazine dated December 25, 1998, rain.forest.puppy describes a security problem with installations of Cold Fusion Application Server when the online documentation is installed."

It seems that while the industry is always changing, some things remain the same (such as vendors not rushing to fix every vulnerability publicly disclosed).

Nessus author Renaud Deraison recalls the oldest plugin, independent of numbering, being "finger.nasl" (Plugin 10068), originally written in C for the first version of Nessus, and later converted to the NASL scripting language. If you thought that older plugins have no relevance today, here is the output of plugin 10068, which was triggered during a vulnerability scan on a "modern day" network:

finger-nasl.png

Following are some of the other plugin milestones:

I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to the next 50,000 plugins!

Related Articles

Cybersecurity News You Can Use

Enter your email and never miss timely alerts and security guidance from the experts at Tenable.