RE: Online Scanning Services Vrs. Stand Alone Applications

From: Davi Ottenheimer (dottenheimer@synchronnetworks.com)
Date: Fri Feb 28 2003 - 17:41:47 EST

All the answers so far seem to fall under the "treatise on the benefits of
someone managing your scanning for you or not". Surely there's someone out
there who's used these outside services and can provide a more detailed
technical comparison of the scanners.

Or am I missing the point here. So far it seems that there really is not a
lot of technical difference -- it's all just a matter of who's running the
scanners and from where. Bandwidth consumption is a configuration issue with
all scanners coming from the outside, not an inherent disadvantage to online
scanners. The same for agents.

My only experience with the online scanners is with simple stuff like
ShieldsUp, which, technically speaking, seem indistinguishable on the
network from running the same attacks with a standalone application on the
outside.

+++ ------------------------------------------------------------- +++
Davi Ottenheimer, CISSP Synchron Networks, Inc.
Chief Security Engineer www.synchronnetworks.com
email: mailto:davi@synchronnetworks.com 100 Enterprise Way, C230
emergency: mailto:8315884778@vtext.com Scotts Valley, CA 95066

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gene Yoo [mailto:gyoo@attbi.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 6:17 PM
> To: Danny; 'pen-test@securityfocus.com'
> Cc: 'Alfred Huger'
> Subject: Re: Online Scanning Services Vrs. Stand Alone Applications
>
>
> IMHO
>
> i have not heard about any comparison except bunch of sales
> pitch. i do agree with danny that depending on the size of
> your pipe, it's not only cost prohibitive but also resource hog.
>
> it's nice that someone outside could do that for you and for
> you to open up ports for them to scan the internal networks
> via vpn tunnel, and of course you're getting an outside
> opinion, but tools like nessus, you could setup a nessus
> client at various parts of your network subnet or your vlans
> and have those remote agents send back the findings to the
> nessus server (perhaps with mysql backend for later
> correlation analysis).
>
> i say there is too many to choose from the menu, but
> choosing the resturant would depend on your budget and taste
> (or what you're used to, etc...).
>
> just my .02
>
> gene
>
> Danny wrote:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > I've not seen a comparison, but in my opinion remote scanning is a
> > waste of time and money for large networks such as anything
> over a class C.
> >
> > Having someone do a full vulnerability scan remotely over
> your entire
> > IP space takes a lot of time and a lot of bandwidth, if a
> company is on a T1 it could take several hours and may impact
> the performance of their corporate link.
> >
> > Having said that, if someone was to come up with a semi remote
> > scanning option for a managed service it may be a little
> more feasible. By semi remote I mean the scanning company has
> an agent on the local LAN which handles the actual scanning
> and simply reports back to an offsite database for analysis.
> >
> > Currently we are using SecureScanNX from vigilante.com. This tool
> > allow us to do full vuln scans of our entire network, we
> have agents
> > placed at various points of the network which handle the
> scanning for
> > their network segments and report back to a controlling terminal,
> > doing this stops us from flooding our WAN/MAN links and keeps the
> > scans times down relatively low.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Danny
> > Network Security Engineer
> > Drexel University
> > PGP Print: C6AD B205 E3C6 38AB 0164 6604 66F5 CCFC F4ED
> F1E0 PGP Key:
> > http://akasha.irt.drexel.edu/danny.asc
> >
> >
> > - -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alfred Huger [mailto:ah@securityfocus.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 4:06 PM
> > To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
> > Subject: Online Scanning Services Vrs. Stand Alone Applications
> >
> >
> >
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I have a question, which is two fold. First can anyone point me to
> > comparison articles of online scanners (such as Foundstone) vrs.
> > standalone applications such as ISS? I am looking for technical
> > comparisons not a treatise on the benefits of someone managing your
> > scanning for you or not.
> >
> > The second part of the question is, are their any technical
> advantages
> > between the two setups? I understand this overlaps with the first
> > question but I ask this after having searched for good writeups and
> > came out with very little.
> >
> > - -al
> >
> >
> > Alfred Huger
> > Symantec Corp.
> >
> >
> > -
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> --
> <<gyoo [at]
> attbi [dot] com>>
>
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