Vulnerability Analysis

Vulnerability assessment is an examination of the ability of a system or application, including current security procedures and controls, to withstand an assault. Vulnerability research is the process of discovering vulnerabilities and design flaws that leave an OS and its applications open to attack or misuse.

A vulnerability refers to a weakness in the design or implementation of a system that can be exploited to compromise the security of the system. It is frequently a security loophole that enables an attacker to enter the system by bypassing user authentication. There are generally two main causes for vulnerable systems in a network, software or hardware misconfiguration and poor programming practices. Attackers exploit these vulnerabilities to perform various types of attacks on organizational resources.

Vulnerability databases collect and maintain information about various vulnerabilities present in the information systems.

The following are some of the vulnerability scoring systems and databases:

• Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

• Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)

• National Vulnerability Database (NVD)

• Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)

https://cwe.mitre.org/

https://www.cve.org/

https://nvd.nist.gov/

Vulnerability Analysis using OpenVAS:

• OpenVAS is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. Its capabilities include unauthenticated testing, authenticated testing, various high level and low-level Internet and industrial protocols, performance tuning for large-scale scans, and a powerful internal programming language to implement any vulnerability test.

Perform Vulnerability Scanning using Nessus:

• Nessus is an assessment solution for identifying vulnerabilities, configuration issues, and malware, which can be used to penetrate networks. It performs vulnerability, configuration, and compliance assessment. It supports various technologies such as OSes, network devices, hypervisors, databases, tablets/phones, web servers, and critical infrastructure.