Vulnerability assessment
1. Vulnerability assessment using openVAS
2. Vulnerability assessment using Nessus
Windows version. Scanning with a policy
3. Vulnerability assessment using GFI LanGuard
Windows tool
4. Nikto scanner
Nikto help
start the scan
-h specifies the targer
-Tuning scan perimenters, x specifies run all scans against the target
Finding cgi directories
saving the scan
-o filename where result will be saved
-F file type
Scanning on other ports
Nikto Plugins
Plugins further extend the capabilities of Nikto. Using information gathered from our basic scans, we can pick and choose plugins that are appropriate to our target. You can use the --list-plugins flag with Nikto to list the plugins or view the whole list in an easier to read format online.
Some interesting plugins include:
| Plugin Name | Description |
|---|---|
apacheusers | Attempt to enumerate Apache HTTP Authentication Users |
cgi | Look for CGI scripts that we may be able to exploit |
robots | Analyse the robots.txt file which dictates what files/folders we are able to navigate to |
dir_traversal | Attempt to use a directory traversal attack (i.e. LFI) to look for system files such as /etc/passwd on Linux (http://ip_address/application.php?view=../../../../../../../etc/passwd) |
We can specify the plugin we wish to use by using the-Plugin argument and the name of the plugin we wish to use...For example, to use the "apacheuser" plugin, our Nikto scan would look like so:
Tuning Your Scan for Vulnerability Searching
Nikto has several categories of vulnerabilities that we can specify our scan to enumerate and test for. The following list is not extensive and only include the ones that you may commonly use. We can use the -Tuningflag and provide a value in our Nikto scan:
| Category Name | Description | Tuning Option |
|---|---|---|
File Upload | Search for anything on the web server that may permit us to upload a file. This could be used to upload a reverse shell for an application to execute. | 0 |
Misconfigurations / Default Files | Search for common files that are sensitive (and shouldn't be accessible such as configuration files) on the web server. | 2 |
Information Disclosure | Gather information about the web server or application (i.e. verison numbers, HTTP headers, or any information that may be useful to leverage in our attack later) | 3 |
Injection | Search for possible locations in which we can perform some kind of injection attack such as XSS or HTML | 4 |
Command Execution | Search for anything that permits us to execute OS commands (such as to spawn a shell) | 8 |
SQL Injection | Look for applications that have URL parameters that are vulnerable to SQL Injection | 9 |
Saving Your Findings
Rather than working with the output on the terminal, we can instead, just dump it directly into a file for further analysis - making our lives much easier!
Nikto is capable of putting to a few file formats including:
Text File
HTML report
We can use the -o argument (short for -Output) and provide both a filename and compatible extension. We can specify the format (-f) specifically, but Nikto is smart enough to use the extension we provide in the-o argument to adjust the output accordingly.
For example, let's scan a web server and output this to "report.html": nikto -h http://ip_address -o report.html
Verbosing our Scan
We can increase the verbosity of our Nikto scan by providing the following arguments with the-Display flag. Unless specified, the output given by Nikto is not the entire output, as it can sometimes be irrelevant (but that isn't always the case!)
| Argument | Description | Reasons for Use |
|---|---|---|
1 | Show any redirects that are given by the web server. | Web servers may want to relocate us to a specific file or directory, so we will need to adjust our scan accordingly for this. |
2 | Show any cookies received | Applications often use cookies as a means of storing data. For example, web servers use sessions, where e-commerce sites may store products in your basket as these cookies. Credentials can also be stored in cookies. |
E | Output any errors | This will be useful for debugging if your scan is not returning the results that you expect! |
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