Assessing Organizational Security Vulnerabilities: A Comprehensive Guide
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Vulnerability assessments are essential for organizations to identify, classify, and prioritize weaknesses in their computer systems, applications, and network infrastructures. These evaluations provide crucial insights and awareness, enabling organizations to understand the risks they face and take appropriate actions. This process is applicable across various industries, from IT to energy and utility sectors.
Conducting a vulnerability assessment allows security teams to adopt a systematic, thorough, and precise approach to detecting and addressing security threats and vulnerabilities. The benefits of such assessments include:
- Early and consistent identification of risks and weaknesses in IT security.
- Remediation efforts to address vulnerabilities and safeguard sensitive data and systems.
- Compliance with cybersecurity regulations and standards, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS.
- Protection against data breaches and unauthorized access.
There are several methods for performing vulnerability assessments, with automated vulnerability scanning software being one of the most popular options. These tools utilize databases of known vulnerabilities to identify potential weaknesses in various systems, applications, and hardware. After conducting scans, they produce reports detailing the identified issues and offer recommendations for mitigating risks. Advanced scanning tools may also provide insights into the security and operational implications of addressing a vulnerability, as opposed to accepting the associated risks. Additionally, vulnerability scan data can be integrated into a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system for more comprehensive threat analysis.
In this guide, we will explore various types of vulnerability scanning tools and their functionalities.
Qualys
Qualys Community Edition offers organizations a user-friendly, flexible, and accurate cloud-based platform for managing security, free of charge. This service allows organizations to protect themselves from existing threats without the need for additional hardware or maintenance costs.
Key Features: - Comprehensive mapping of your entire IT infrastructure to identify assets, whether in the cloud or on-premises. - Detection and assessment of vulnerabilities in both internal and external IT resources. - Scanning of external or internal web applications for vulnerabilities, including those listed in the OWASP Top 10. - Customizable dashboards that reflect your organization’s essential security metrics.
Qualys Community Edition includes: - 16 Cloud Agents. - Vulnerability Management for up to 16 internal and 3 external IPs. - Web Application Scanning for a single URL. - 1 Virtual Scanner Appliance. - CloudView for reviewing cloud workloads and infrastructure.
This Community Edition serves as a limited version of Express Lite, maintaining the same scanning capabilities, comprehensive CVE coverage, and Six Sigma accuracy.
To utilize Qualys, you must first register on their platform. After providing the required information, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to access the web platform.
To initiate a scan, provide the target IPs or ranges. In the Qualys VM, navigate to the “Assets” tab and click on “Host Assets.” From the “New” menu, choose how you want to track your hosts.
By default, the “IP Tracked Hosts” option is selected. You can also track hosts using DNS or NetBIOS hostnames, which is beneficial in dynamic networking environments, such as those using DHCP for IP address assignments.
In the “New Hosts” window, go to the “Host IPs” tab to add new IP addresses for the web servers you wish to scan. Once added, these IPs will appear in your “Host Assets” list and be ready for scanning.
Next, return to the dashboard and select the “Start your scan” option to open the vulnerability scan window. In this window, provide the necessary information, including the title, option profile, and IPs/ranges, then click the “Launch” button to begin the scanning process.
After the scan is complete, Qualys will email you the results. Click on the provided link to view all vulnerabilities categorized by severity level, along with countermeasure techniques to address these issues.
SQLiv
SQLiv is a Python-based scanning tool that utilizes search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo to perform targeted scans, specifically focusing on discovering pages vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks. It employs known dorks to locate susceptible URLs.
To download SQLiv, visit the https://github.com/the-robot/sqliv page. Clone the repository to the /opt directory using the following command: root@kali:/opt# git clone https://github.com/the-robot/sqliv.git Navigate to the sqliv folder and install the required dependencies: root@kali:/opt/sqliv# pip install -r requirements.txt After installation, you can run the tool using the python command and view the help page with the --help option: root@kali:/opt/sqliv# python sqliv.py --help To search for vulnerabilities using an SQL injection dork (-d) and find sites containing “php?id=” in their URLs via Google (-e), limiting the results to 20 vulnerable websites: root@kali:/opt/sqliv# python sqliv.py -d "php?id=" -e google -p 20
Nikto
Nikto is a web security tool that checks a website for a wide array of potential security vulnerabilities, including dangerous files, misconfigured services, and other concerns. This open-source tool is modular, with frequently updated modules that enhance its capabilities.
Nikto is not a stealthy tool; it generates over 2000 HTTP GET requests to the web server, which can create numerous entries in the server logs. This feature can be useful for testing an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Any web server log monitoring, host-based intrusion detection (HIDS), or network-based intrusion detection (NIDS) should detect a Nikto scan. However, it also supports LibWhisker’s anti-IDS techniques for those wishing to test their IDS systems.
To start Nikto, type nikto in the terminal and press Enter. For additional help and usage information, add the -h option: root@kali:~# nikto -h To scan a web server host (-h) and save the results (-o) in the /root/Desktop/ directory as nikto_report in HTML format (-F): root@kali:~# nikto -h 10.10.10.10 -o /root/Desktop/nikto_report -F html The scan results will reveal the identified issues along with their OSVDB classifications. Nikto can uncover server details, such as the web server type, the count of existing entries, directory indexing permissions, and Apache installation files.
You can view the scanned output file nikto_report.html in your browser for a user-friendly presentation of the results.
The Nikto Web Vulnerability Scanner is a staple tool for penetration testers and security analysts, often revealing critical information about a web server that may be exploited later during vulnerability assessments.
Vulnerability scanning represents just one aspect of vulnerability evaluation—other methods, such as penetration testing, can uncover additional threats to your organization. Penetration testing complements vulnerability scanning by assessing the potential damage, data loss, or other issues that could arise.