What are scanners?
Scanners, the subject of this post, are "neutral" network applications. this means that they can help both a hacker and an administrator. Their task is to collect information about network devices. As it turns out, this information can be quite varied. We are able to discover which software is used in the system, to check how long it has been running, and to find out about the available ports. Of course the scanners are written in such a way that their activity won't leave unwanted footprints on the target machine. It happens often that scanning is performed using undocumented protocols, the monitoring of which is usually ignored.
The advantages this presents may seem to be useful only to a hacker, but they are also important to an administrator. They allow us to make appropriate changes to the settings and improve the system security level.
There are three popular scanners, Nmap, Nessus, and Nikto. Each of these applications provides different functions, and they complement each other perfectly.
Scanners, the subject of this post, are "neutral" network applications. this means that they can help both a hacker and an administrator. Their task is to collect information about network devices. As it turns out, this information can be quite varied. We are able to discover which software is used in the system, to check how long it has been running, and to find out about the available ports. Of course the scanners are written in such a way that their activity won't leave unwanted footprints on the target machine. It happens often that scanning is performed using undocumented protocols, the monitoring of which is usually ignored.
The advantages this presents may seem to be useful only to a hacker, but they are also important to an administrator. They allow us to make appropriate changes to the settings and improve the system security level.
There are three popular scanners, Nmap, Nessus, and Nikto. Each of these applications provides different functions, and they complement each other perfectly.
NMAP
Post By:-Gurdeep Singh
