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Nessus Tops Security Tools Survey
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-06-27
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The vulnerability scanner topped the list published by Insecure.org as a followup to their 2003 survey on the top 100 network security tools available.
Packet sniffer Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) closely followed Nessus in the survey list, with well-known intrusion detection system Snort placing third, Insecure.org reported in its 2006 survey of the Top 100 Network Security Tools.
No votes were counted for the Nmap security scanner, since the survey was conducted on a nmap mailing list, the survey site said. Since the nmap-hackers mailing list is for people who like to explore systems, the list has a slight bias toward attack tools.
The venerable Netcat had plenty of fans among the 3,243 respondents. It listed fourth right after Snort. New to the list was the Metasploit Framework, popping in at number five.
Metasploit serves as "an advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code."
"Similar professional exploitation tools, such as Core Impact and Canvas already existed for wealthy users on all sides of the ethical spectrum," Insecure writes. "Metasploit simply brought this capability to the masses."
High-powered ping tool Hping2 allows for IP fragmentation. It has utility for those attempting to find information about hosts behind a firewall that would normally block typical ICMP traffic.
Wireless sniffer Kismet works as a passive sniffer, and has likely gained in popularity as more wireless networks go into deployment. The powerful utility tends to find its way onto laptops used by wardrivers looking for access points.
TCPdump has declined somewhat in usage as more admins and others turn to Wireshark. Enough users still rely on TCPdump to place it eighth on the list.
A pair of password crackers, Cain and Abel on Windows and John the Ripper on Unix and other platforms, placed nine and ten on the list. Windows administrators should pay particular attention to Cain and Abel, which can handle a variety of password gathering tasks and has been nicely documented by its developers.
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Tag: Network Security
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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