Software Update: Nessus 2.2.6

Nessus is a security scanner that can scan a network for known exploits and open services. Please note that the program may only be used if you have permission to check the security of the network. The long list exploits and outstanding services can be further expanded with own written scripts. The package runs on most Posix systems such as Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris. The developers have recently released version 2.2.6 on the website with the following announcement:

Nessus 2.2.6 has been released today. It is a maintenance release which fixes several minor bugs, adds a new function to the NASL language and contains an improved version of the Nessus TCP scanner. We recommend to every Nessus 2.2 user to upgrade to this version. Here is a quick summary of the changes and improvements in this release:

Changes affecting the Nessus engine:

• Fixed a problem which would prevent nessusd from starting up properly when the system clock is not configured properly
• Under certain circumstances, the plugins preferences may appear twice in the Nessus GUI
• nessus-fetch is more reliable when used in a very low bandwidth environment
• nessusd has higher memory limits when running on a 64 bit CPU
• New NASL function socket_get_error() which returns the last error which occurred on a socket (timeout, connection reset, etc…)
• Removed the C function http_recv_headers() in favor of http_recv_headers2() written in NASL

Changes affecting the Nessus plugins:

• The Windows Bulletin checks now check the version of the files on the remote host (when possible) instead of looking at the registry
• It is now possible to disable CGI scanning entirely in the “Global Settings” preference panel
• Rewritten several key plugins (dcetest.nasl, netbios_name_get.nasl) to better support the underlying protocol
• nessus_tcp_scanner now performs multiple passes, for improved reliability. It also is much quicker against BSD machines (which have a rate limitation for the RST they send)