COMPUTER SECURITY TOOLBOX

List of mainly obscure security software geared more for the master pentester. These are mostly for unix, bsd, and mac and many are difficult to install and setup (require custom servers, inside access points, obscure libraries). Only programs that output data are included, so no actual exploits or anything. Most of these output extremely useful albeit extremely technical information.

You may be looking for the article: Vulnerability Scanners Review, or Top 5 Vulnerability Port Scanners

Obscure/Rare Security Software

rwhois

really great addition to using whois. Get additional info not on whois, query rwhois servers.

lft

useful alternative method of tracerouteing. oppleman

packit

define (spoof) nearly all TCP, UDP, ICMP, IP, ARP, RARP, and Ethernet header options

etherape

really cool graphical program that displays connections and protocols similar to cheops.

amap

fingerprinting

xprobe2

fingerprinting

p0f2

really exceptional fingerprinting. can be passively run in the BG.

firewalk

good packetfiltering enumerator

BGPview

bgp anyone?

icmpenum

icmp fingerprinting

dnstracer

awesome and creative graphical output of dns

ssldump

not really that useful but impressive in a report

ftester

for master pentesters only — get the lowdown on your packetfiltering

mtr

alternative traceroute

MRTG

favorite tool of ISPs, many uses here

host

don't forget this one

ike-scan

scan for vpns

upnpscan

scan for upnp devices

ftp-spider

get info on ftp server

traceproto

very nice alternative to traceroute/firewalk

sing

packet crafting

nmbscan

NBM Scanner

nbtscan

NBT Scanner

admsmb

ADMsmb

netleak

Netleak

dmitry

 

sara

Original security auditing software

isic

ISIC

dnsa

DNS

nemesis

Packet Crafting

zodiacdns

DNS Hacking

fragroute

Fragmented Packet Crafter/Scanner

sentry 2.0

 

Caecus

 

C-Parse

 

ftester

Master Pentesting Tool, Map out the filtering of your firewall with internal and external nodes

pchar

More common security programs

Nessus

Premier UNIX vulnerability assessment tool - Nessus is the best free network vulnerability scanner available, and the best to run on UNIX at any price. It is constantly updated, with more than 11,000 plugins for the free (but registration and EULA-acceptance required) feed. Key features include remote and local (authenticated) security checks, a client/server architecture with a GTK graphical interface, and an embedded scripting language for writing your own plugins or understanding the existing ones.

Wireshark

Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together - Wireshark (known as Ethereal until a trademark dispute in Summer 2006) is a fantastic open source network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, delving down into just the level of packet detail you need. Wireshark has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session. It also supports hundreds of protocols and media types. A tcpdump-like console version named tethereal is included. One word of caution is that Ethereal has suffered from dozens of remotely exploi security holes, so stay up-to-date and be wary of running it on unusted or hostile networks (such as security conferences).

Snort

A Everyone's favorite open source IDS - This lightweight network inusion detection and prevention system excels at traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. Through protocol analysis, content searching, and various pre-processors, Snort detects thousands of worms, vulnerability exploit attempts, port scans, and other suspicious behavior. Snort uses a flexible rule-based language to describe traffic that it should collect or pass, and a modular detection engine. Also check out the free Basic Analysis and Security Engine (BASE), a web interface for analyzing Snort alerts. Open source Snort works fine for many individuals, small businesses, and departments. Parent company SourceFire offers a complimentary product line with more enterprise-level features and real-time rule updates. They offer a free (with registration) 5-day-delayed rules feed, and you can also find many great free rules at Bleeding Edge Snort.

Netcat

The network Swiss army knife - This simple utility reads and writes data across TCP or UDP network connections. It is designed to be a reliable back-end tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need, including port binding to accept incoming connections. The original Netcat was released by Hobbit in 1995, but it hasn't been maintained despite its immense popularity. It can sometimes even be hard to find nc110.tgz. The flexibility and usefulness of this tool have prompted people to write numerous other Netcat implementations - often with modern features not found in the original. One of the most interesting is Socat, which extends Netcat to support many other socket types, SSL encryption, SOCKS proxies, and more. It even made this list on its own merits. There is also Chris Gibson's Ncat, which offers even more features while remaining por and compact. Other takes on Netcat include OpenBSD's nc, Cryptcat, Netcat6, PNetcat, SBD, and so-called GNU Netcat.

Metasploit Framework

Hack the Planet - Metasploit took the security world by storm when it was released in 2004. No other new tool even broke into the top 15 of this list, yet Metasploit comes in at #5, ahead of many well-loved tools that have been developed for more than a decade. It is an advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code. The extensible model through which payloads, encoders, no-op generators, and exploits can be integrated has made it possible to use the Metasploit Framework as an outlet for cutting-edge exploitation research. It ships with hundreds of exploits, as you can see in their online exploit building demo. This makes writing your own exploits easier, and it certainly beats scouring the darkest corners of the Internet for illicit shellcode of dubious quality. Similar professional exploitation tools, such as Core Impact and Canvas already existed for wealthy users on all sides of the ethical specum. Metasploit simply brought this capability to the masses.

Hping2

A network probing utility like ping on steroids - This handy little utility assembles and sends custom ICMP, UDP, or TCP packets and then displays any replies. It was inspired by the ping command, but offers far more conol over the probes sent. It also has a handy aceroute mode and supports IP fragmentation. This tool is particularly useful when ying to aceroute/ping/probe hosts behind a firewall that blocks attempts using the standard utilities. This often allows you to map out firewall rulesets. It is also great for learning more about TCP/IP and experimenting with IP protocols.

Kismet

A powerful wireless sniffer - Kismet is an console (ncurses) based 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and inusion detection system. It identifies networks by passively sniffing (as opposed to more active tools such as NetStumbler), and can even decloak hidden (non-beaconing) networks if they are in use. It can automatically detect network IP blocks by sniffing TCP, UDP, ARP, and DHCP packets, log traffic in Wireshark/TCPDump compatible format, and even plot detected networks and estimated ranges on downloaded maps. As you might expect, this tool is commonly used for wardriving. Oh, and also warwalking, warflying, and warskating

Tcpdump

The classic sniffer for network monitoring and data acquisition - Tcpdump is the IP sniffer we all used before Ethereal (Wireshark) came on the scene, and many of us continue to use it frequently. It may not have the bells and whistles (such as a pretty GUI or parsing logic for hundreds of application protocols) that Wireshark has, but it does the job well and with fewer security holes. It also requires fewer system resources. While it doesn't receive new features often, it is actively maintained to fix bugs and portability problems. It is great for acking down network problems or monitoring activity. There is a separate Windows port named WinDump. TCPDump is the source of the Libpcap/WinPcap packet capture library, which is used by Nmap among many other tools.

Cain and Abel

The top password recovery tool for Windows - UNIX users often smugly assert that the best free security tools support their platform first, and Windows ports are often an afterthought. They are usually right, but Cain & Abel is a glaring exception. This Windows-only password recovery tool handles an enormous variety of tasks. It can recover passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords using Dictionary, Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analyzing routing protocols. It is also well documented.

John the Ripper

A powerful, flexible, and fast multi-platform password hash cracker - John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix (11 are officially supported, not counting different architectures), DOS, Win32, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. It supports several crypt(3) password hash types which are most commonly found on various Unix flavors, as well as Kerberos AFS and Windows NT/2000/XP LM hashes. Several other hash types are added with conibuted patches. You will want to start with some wordlists, which you can find here, here, or here.

Ettercap

In case you still thought switched LANs provide much exa security - Ettercap is a terminal-based network sniffer/interceptor/logger for ethernet LANs. It supports active and passive dissection of many protocols (even ciphered ones, like ssh and https). Data injection in an established connection and filtering on the fly is also possible, keeping the connection synchronized. Many sniffing modes were implemented to give you a powerful and complete sniffing suite. Plugins are supported. It has the ability to check whether you are in a switched LAN or not, and to use OS fingerprints (active or passive) to let you know the geomey of the LAN.

Nikto

A more comprehensive web scanner - Nikto is an open source (GPL) web server scanner which performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 3200 potentially dangerous files/CGIs, versions on over 625 servers, and version specific problems on over 230 servers. Scan items and plugins are frequently updated and can be automatically updated (if desired). It uses Whisker/libwhisker for much of its underlying functionality. It is a great tool, but the value is limited by its infrequent updates. The newest and most critical vulnerabilities are often not detected.

Ping/telnet/dig/aceroute/whois/netsta

The basics - While there are many whiz-bang high-tech tools out there to assist in security auditing, don't forget about the basics! Everyone should be very familiar with these tools as they come with most operating systems (except that Windows omits whois and uses the name acert). They can be very handy in a pinch, although for more advanced usage you may be better off with Hping2 and Netcat.

OpenSSH / PuTTY / SSH

A secure way to access remote computers - SSH (Secure Shell) is the now ubiquitous program for logging into or executing commands on a remote machine. It provides secure encrypted communications between two unusted hosts over an insecure network, replacing the hideously insecure telnet/rlogin/rsh alternatives. Most UNIX users run the open source OpenSSH server and client. Windows users often prefer the free PuTTY client, which is also available for many mobile devices. Other Windows users prefer the nice terminal-based port of OpenSSH that comes with Cygwin. Dozens of other free and proprietary clients exist. You can explore them here or here.

THC Hydra

A Fast network authentication cracker which support many different services - When you need to brute force crack a remote authentication service, Hydra is often the tool of choice. It can perform rapid dictionary attacks against more then 30 protocols, including telnet, ftp, http, https, smb, several databases, and much more. Like THC Amap this release is from the fine folks at THC.

Paros proxy

A web application vulnerability assessment proxy - A Java based web proxy for assessing web application vulnerability. It supports editing/viewing HTTP/HTTPS messages on-the-fly to change items such as cookies and form fields. It includes a web traffic recorder, web spider, hash calculator, and a scanner for testing common web application attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

Dsniff

A suite of powerful network auditing and peneation-testing tools - This popular and well-engineered suite by Dug Song includes many tools. dsniff, filesnarf, mailsnarf, msgsnarf, urlsnarf, and webspy passively monitor a network for interesting data (passwords, e-mail, files, etc.). arpspoof, dnsspoof, and macof facilitate the interception of network traffic normally unavailable to an attacker (e.g, due to layer-2 switching). sshmitm and webmitm implement active monkey-in-the-middle attacks against redirected ssh and https sessions by exploiting weak bindings in ad-hoc PKI. A separately maintained partial Windows port is available here. Overall, this is a great toolset. It handles pretty much all of your password sniffing needs.

NetStumbler

Free Windows 802.11 Sniffer - Netstumbler is the best known Windows tool for finding open wireless access points ("wardriving"). They also disibute a WinCE version for PDAs and such named Ministumbler. The tool is currently free but Windows-only and no source code is provided. It uses a more active approach to finding WAPs than passive sniffers such as Kismet or KisMAC.

THC Amap

An application fingerprinting scanner - Amap is a great tool for determining what application is listening on a given port. Their database isn't as large as what Nmap uses for its version detection feature, but it is definitely worth ying for a 2nd opinion or if Nmap fails to detect a service. Amap even knows how to parse Nmap output files. This is yet another valuable tool from the great guys at THC.

GFI LANguard

A commercial network security scanner for Windows - GFI LANguard scans IP networks to detect what machines are running. Then it ies to discern the host OS and what applications are running. I also ies to collect Windows machine's service pack level, missing security patches, wireless access points, USB devices, open shares, open ports, services/applications active on the computer, key registry enies, weak passwords, users and groups, and more. Scan results are saved to an HTML report, which can be customized/queried. It also includes a patch manager which detects and installs missing patches. A free ial version is available, though it only works for up to 30 days.

Aircrack

The fastest available WEP/WPA cracking tool - Aircrack is a suite of tools for 802.11a/b/g WEP and WPA cracking. It can recover a 40 through 512-bit WEP key once enough encrypted packets have been gathered. It can also attack WPA 1 or 2 networks using advanced cryptographic methods or by brute force. The suite includes airodump (an 802.11 packet capture program), aireplay (an 802.11 packet injection program), aircrack (static WEP and WPA-PSK cracking), and airdecap (decrypts WEP/WPA capture files).

Superscan

A Windows-only port scanner, pinger, and resolver - SuperScan is a free Windows-only closed-source TCP/UDP port scanner by Foundstone. It includes a variety of additional networking tools such as ping, aceroute, http head, and whois.

Netfilter

The current Linux kernel packet filter/firewall - Netfilter is a powerful packet filter implemented in the standard Linux kernel. The userspace ips tool is used for configuration. It now supports packet filtering (stateless or stateful), all kinds of network address and port anslation (NAT/NAPT), and multiple API layers for 3rd party extensions. It includes many different modules for handling unruly protocols such as FTP. For other UNIX platforms, see Openbsd PF (OpenBSD specific), or IP Filter. Many personal firewalls are available for Windows (Tiny,Zone Alarm, Norton, Kerio, ...), though none made this list. Microsoft included a very basic firewall in Windows XP SP2, and will nag you incessantly until you install it.

Retina

Commercial vulnerability assessment scanner by eEye - Like Nessus, Retina's function is to scan all the hosts on a network and report on any vulnerabilities found. It was written by eEye, who are well known for their security research.

Angry IP Scanner

A fast windows IP scanner and port scanner - Angry IP Scanner can perform basic host discovery and port scans on Windows. Its binary file size is very small compared to other scanners and other pieces of information about the target hosts can be extended with a few plugins.

RKHunter

An Unix Rootkit Detector - RKHunter is scanning tool that checks for signs of various pieces of nasty software on your system like rootkits, backdoors and local exploits. It runs many tests, including MD5 hash comparisons, default filenames used by rootkits, wrong file permissions for binaries, and suspicious sings in LKM and KLD modules.

Ike-scan

VPN detector/scanner - Ike-scan exploits ansport characteristics in the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) service, the mechanism used by VPNs to establish a connection between a server and a remote client. It scans IP addresses for VPN servers by sending a specially crafted IKE packet to each host within a network. Most hosts running IKE will respond, identifying their presence. The tool then remains silent and monitors reansmission packets. These reansmission responses are recorded, displayed and matched against a known set of VPN product fingerprints. Ike-scan can VPNs from manufacturers including Checkpoint, Cisco, Microsoft, Nortel, and Watchguard.

Arpwatch

Keeps ack of ethernet/IP address pairings and can detect certain monkey business Arpwatch is the classic ARP man-in-the-middle attack detector from LBNL's Network Research Group. It syslogs activity and reports certain changes via email. Arpwatch uses LibPcap to listen for ARP packets on a local ethernet interface.

KisMAC

A A GUI passive wireless stumbler for Mac OS X - This popular stumbler for Mac OS X offers many of the features of its namesake Kismet, though the codebase is entirely different. Unlike console-based Kismet, KisMAC offers a pretty GUI and was around before Kismet was ported to OS X. It also offers mapping, Pcap-format import and logging, and even some decryption and deauthentication attacks.

OSSEC HIDS

An Open Source Host-based Inusion Detection System - OSSEC HIDS performs log analysis, integrity checking, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active response. In addition to its IDS functionality, it is commonly used as a SEM/SIM solution. Because of its powerful log analysis engine, ISPs, universities and data centers are running OSSEC HIDS to monitor and analyze their firewalls, IDSs, web servers and authentication logs.

Openbsd PF

The OpenBSD Packet Filter - Like Netfilter and IP Filter on other platforms, OpenBSD users love PF, their firewall tool. It handles network address anslation, normalizing TCP/IP traffic, providing bandwidth conol, and packet prioritization. It also offers some eccenic features, such as passive OS detection. Coming from the same guys who created OpenBSD, you can ust that it has been well audited and coded to avoid the sort of security holes we have seen in other packet filters.

Nemesis

Packet injection simplified - The Nemesis Project is designed to be a commandline-based, por human IP stack for UNIX/Linux (and now Windows!). The suite is broken down by protocol, and should allow for useful scripting of injected packet streams from simple shell scripts. If you enjoy Nemesis, you might also want to look at Hping2 as they complement each other well.

Tor

An anonymous Internet communication system - Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, irc, ssh, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features. For a free cross-platform GUI, users recommend Vidalia

Knoppix

A general-purpose boo live system on CD or DVD - Knoppix consists of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or as many nmap survey takers attest, a por security tool. For a security-specific Linux disibution see Backack.

ISS Internet Scanner

Application-level vulnerability assessment - Internet Scanner started off in '92 as a tiny open source scanner by Christopher Klaus. Now he has grown ISS into a billion-dollar company with a myriad of security products.

Fport

Foundstone's enhanced netstat - Fport reports all open TCP/IP and UDP ports on the machine you run it on and shows what application opened each port. So it can be used to quickly identify unknown open ports and their associated applications. It only runs on Windows, but many UNIX systems now provided this information via netstat (y 'netstat -pan' on Linux). Here is a PDF-Format SANS article on using Fport and analyzing the results.

chkrootkit

Locally checks for signs of a rootkit - chkrootkit is a flexible, por tool that can check for many signs of rootkit inusion on Unix-based systems. Its features include detecting binary modification, utmp/wtmp/lastlog modifications, promiscuous interfaces, and malicious kernel modules.

SPIKE Proxy

HTTP Hacking - Spike Proxy is an open source HTTP proxy for finding security flaws in web sites. It is part of the Spike Application Testing Suite and supports automated SQL injection detection, web site crawling, login form brute forcing, overflow detection, and directory aversal detection.

OpenBSD

The Proactively Secure Operating System - OpenBSD is one of the only operating systems to eat security as their very highest priority. Even higher than usability in some cases. But their enviable security record speaks for itself. They also focus on stability and fight to obtain documentation for the hardware they wish to support. Perhaps their greatest achievement was creating OpenSSH. OpenBSD users also love [pf], their firewall tool.

Yersinia

A multi-protocol low-level attack tool - Yersinia is a low-level protocol attack tool useful for peneation testing. It is capable of many diverse attacks over multiple protocols, such as becoming the root role in the Spanning ee (Spanning ee Protocol), creating virtual CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) neighbors, becoming the active router in a HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) scenario, faking DHCP replies, and other low-level attacks.

Nagios

An open source host, service and network monitoring program - Nagios is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and when they get better. Some of its many features include monitoring of network services (smtp, pop3, http, nntp, ping, etc.), monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.), and contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method).

Fragroute / Fragrouter

A network inusion detection evasion toolkit - Fragrouter is a one-way fragmenting router - IP packets get sent from the attacker to the Fragrouter, which ansforms them into a fragmented data stream to forward to the victim. Many network IDS are unable or simply don't bother to reconsuct a coherent view of the network data (via IP fragmentation and TCP stream reassembly), as discussed in this classic paper. Fragrouter helps an attacker launch IP-based attacks while avoiding detection. It is part of the NIDSbench suite of tools by Dug Song. Fragroute is a similar tool which is also by Dug Song.

X-scan

A general scanner for scanning network vulnerabilities - A multi-threaded, plug-in-supported vulnerability scanner. X-Scan includes many features, including full NASL support, detecting service types, remote OS type/version detection, weak user/password pairs, and more. You may be able to find newer versions available here if you can deal with most of the page being written in Chinese.

Whisker/libwhisker

Rain.Forest.Puppy's CGI vulnerability scanner and library - Libwhisker is a Perl module geared geared towards HTTP testing. It provides functions for testing HTTP servers for many known security holes, particularly the presence of dangerous CGIs. Whisker is a scanner that used libwhisker but is now deprecated in favor of Nikto which also uses libwhisker.

Socat

A relay for bidirectional data ansfer - A utility similar to the venerable Netcat that works over a number of protocols and through a files, pipes, devices (terminal or modem, etc.), sockets (Unix, IP4, IP6 - raw, UDP, TCP), a client for SOCKS4, proxy CONNECT, or SSL, etc. It provides forking, logging, and dumping, different modes for interprocess communication, and many more options. It can be used, for example, as a TCP relay (one-shot or daemon), as a daemon-based socksifier, as a shell interface to Unix sockets, as an IP6 relay, for redirecting TCP-oriented programs to a serial line, or to establish a relatively secure environment (su and chroot) for running client or server shell scripts with network connections.

Sara

Security Auditor's Research Assistant - SARA is a vulnerability assessment tool that was derived from the infamous SATAN scanner. They y to release updates twice a month and y to leverage other software created by the open source community (such as Nmap and Samba).

QualysGuard

A web-based vulnerability scanner - Delivered as a service over the Web, QualysGuard eliminates the burden of deploying, maintaining, and updating vulnerability management software or implementing ad-hoc security applications. Clients securely access QualysGuard through an easy-to-use Web interface. QualysGuard features 5,000+ unique vulnerability checks, an Inference-based scanning engine, and automated daily updates to the QualysGuard vulnerability KnowledgeBase.

ClamAV

A GPL anti-virus toolkit for UNIX - ClamAV is a powerful AntiVirus scanner focused towards integration with mail servers for attachment scanning. It provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via the Internet. Clam AntiVirus is based on a shared library disibuted with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date.

Burpsuite

An integrated platform for attacking web applications - Burp suite allows an attacker to combine manual and automated techniques to enumerate, analyze, attack and exploit web applications. The various burp tools work together effectively to share information and allow findings identified within one tool to form the basis of an attack using another.

Brutus

A network brute-force authentication cracker - This Windows-only cracker bangs against network services of remote systems ying to guess passwords by using a dictionary and permutations thereof. It supports HTTP, POP3, FTP, SMB, TELNET, IMAP, NTP, and more. No source code is available. UNIX users should take a look at THC Hydra.

Unicornscan

Not your mother's port scanner - Unicornscan is an attempt at a User-land Disibuted TCP/IP stack for information gathering and correlation. It is intended to provide a researcher a superior interface for inoducing a stimulus into and measuring a response from a TCP/IP enabled device or network. Some of its features include asynchronous stateless TCP scanning with all variations of TCP flags, asynchronous stateless TCP banner grabbing, and active/passive remote OS, application, and component identification by analyzing responses. Like Scanrand, it isn't for the faint of heart.

Stunnel

A general-purpose SSL cryptographic wrapper - The stunnel program is designed to work as an SSL encryption wrapper between remote client and local (ine-star) or remote server. It can be used to add SSL functionality to commonly used ine daemons like POP2, POP3, and IMAP servers without any changes in the programs' code. It will negotiate an SSL connection using the OpenSSL or SSLeay libraries.

Honeyd

Your own personal honeynet Honeyd is a small daemon that creates virtual hosts on a network. The hosts can be configured to run arbiary services, and their TCP personality can be adapted so that they appear to be running certain versions of operating systems. Honeyd enables a single host to claim multiple addresses on a LAN for network simulation. It is possible to ping the virtual machines, or to aceroute them. Any type of service on the virtual machine can be simulated according to a simple configuration file. It is also possible to proxy services to another machine rather than simulating them. It has many library dependencies, which can make compiling/installing Honeyd difficult.

Fping

A parallel ping scanning program - fping is a ping(1) like program which uses the Internet Conol Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a host is up. fping is different from ping in that you can specify any number of hosts on the command line, or specify a file containing the lists of hosts to ping. Instead of ying one host until it timeouts or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next host in a round-robin fashion. If a host replies, it is noted and removed from the list of hosts to check. If a host does not respond within a certain time limit and/or rey limit it will be considered unreachable.

BASE

The Basic Analysis and Security Engine - BASE is a PHP-based analysis engine to search and process a database of security events generated by various IDSs, firewalls, and network monitoring tools. Its features include a query-builder and search interface for finding alerts matching different patterns, a packet viewer/decoder, and charts and statistics based on time, sensor, signature, protocol, IP address, etc.

Argus

A generic IP network ansaction auditing tool - Argus is a fixed-model Real Time Flow Monitor designed to ack and report on the status and performance of all network ansactions seen in a data network traffic stream. Argus provides a common data format for reporting flow meics such as connectivity, capacity, demand, loss, delay, and jitter on a per ansaction basis. The record format that Argus uses is flexible and extensible, supporting generic flow identifiers and meics, as well as application/protocol specific information.

Wikto

Web Server Assessment Tool - Wikto is a tool that checks for flaws in webservers. It provides much the same functionality as Nikto but adds various interesting pieces of functionality, such as a Back-End miner and close Google integration. Wikto is written for the MS .NET environment and registration is required to download the binary and/or source code.

Sguil

The Analyst Console for Network Security Monitoring - Sguil (pronounced sgweel) is built by network security analysts for network security analysts. Sguil's main component is an intuitive GUI that provides realtime events from Snort/barnyard. It also includes other components which facilitate the practice of Network Security Monitoring and event driven analysis of IDS alerts.

Scanrand

An unusually fast stateless network service and topology discovery system - Scanrand is a stateless host-discovery and port-scanner similar in design to Unicornscan. It ades off reliability for amazingly fast speeds and uses cryptographic techniques to prevent attackers from manipulating scan results. This utility is a part of a software package called Paketto Keiretsu which was written by Dan Kaminsky.

IP Filter

Por UNIX Packet Filter - IP Filter is a software package that can be used to provide network address anslation (NAT) or firewall services. It can either be used as a loadable kernel module or incorporated into your UNIX kernel; use as a loadable kernel module where possible is highly recommended. Scripts are provided to install and patch system files, as required. IP Filter is disibuted with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris. OpenBSD users should see Openbsd PF and Linux users Netfilter.

Canvas

A Comprehensive Exploitation Framework - Canvas is a commercial vulnerability exploitation tool from Dave Aitel's ImmunitySec. It includes more than 150 exploits and is less expensive than Core Impact, though it still costs thousands of dollars. You can also buy the optional VisualSploit Plugin for drag and drop GUI exploit creation. Zero-day exploits can occasionally be found within Canvas.

VMware

Multi-platform Virtualization Software - VMware virtualization software lets you run one operating system within another. This is quite useful for security researchers who commonly need to test code, exploits, etc on multiple platforms. It only runs on Windows and Linux as the host OS, but pretty much any x86 OS will run inside the virtualized environment. It is also useful for setting up sandboxes. You can browse from within a VMware window so the even if you are infected with malware, it cannot reach your host OS. And recovering the guest OS is as simple as loading a "snapshot" from prior to the infection. VMware player (executes, but can't create OS images) and VMWare Server (partitions a physical server machine into multiple virtual machines) were recently released for free. Another interesting virtualization system (Linux focused) is Xen.

Tcpaceroute

A aceroute implementation using TCP packets - The problem is that with the widespread use of firewalls on the modern Internet, many of the packets that the conventional aceroute(8) sends out (ICMP echo or UDP) end up being filtered, making it impossible to completely ace the path to the destination. However, in many cases, these firewalls will permit inbound TCP packets to specific ports that hosts sitting behind the firewall are listening for connections on. By sending out TCP SYN packets instead of UDP or ICMP ECHO packets, tcpaceroute is able to bypass the most common firewall filters.

SAINT

Security Adminisator's Integrated Network Tool - SAINT is another commercial vulnerability assessment tool (like Nessus, ISS Internet Scanner, or Retina). It runs on UNIX and used to be free and open source, but is now a commercial product.

OpenVPN

A full-featured SSL VPN solution - OpenVPN is an open-source SSL VPN package which can accommodate a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, WiFi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-conols. OpenVPN implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the indusy standard SSL/TLS protocol, supports flexible client authentication methods based on certificates, smart cards, and/or 2-factor authentication, and allows user or group-specific access conol policies using firewall rules applied to the VPN virtual interface. OpenVPN uses OpenSSL as its primary cryptographic library.

OllyDbg

An assembly level Windows debugger - OllyDbg is a 32-bit assembler level analyzing debugger for Microsoft Windows. Emphasis on binary code analysis makes it particularly useful in cases where source is unavailable. OllyDbg features an intuitive user interface, advanced code analysis capable of recognizing procedures, loops, API calls, switches, s, constants and sings, an ability to attach to a running program, and good multi-thread support. OllyDbg is free to download and use but no source code is provided.

Helix

A Linux Disibution with Computer Forensics in Mind - Helix is a customized disibution of the Knoppix Live Linux CD. Helix is more than just a boo live CD. You can still boot into a customized Linux environment that includes customized Linux kernels, excellent hardware detection and many applications dedicated to Incident Response and Forensics. Helix has been designed very carefully to NOT touch the host computer in any way and it is forensically sound. Helix will not auto mount swap space, or auto mount any attached devices. Helix also has a special Windows autorun side for Incident Response and Forensics.

Bastille

Security hardening script for Linux, Mac OS X, and HP-UX - The Bastille Hardening program "locks down" an operating system, proactively configuring the system for increased security and decreasing its susceptibility to compromise. Bastille can also assess a system's current state of hardening, granularly reporting on each of the security settings with which it works. Bastille currently supports the Red Hat (Fedora Core, Enterprise, and Numbered/Classic), SUSE, Debian, Gentoo, and Mandrake disibutions, along with HP-UX and Mac OS X. Bastille's focuses on letting the system's user/adminisator choose exactly how to harden the operating system. In its default hardening mode, it interactively asks the user questions, explains the topics of those questions, and builds a policy based on the user's answers. It then applies the policy to the system. In its assessment mode, it builds a report intended to teach the user about available security settings as well as inform the user as to which settings have been tightened.

Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner

Commercial Web Vulnerability Scanner - Acunetix WVS automatically checks your web applications for vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection, cross site scripting, and weak password sength on authentication pages. Acunetix WVS boasts a comfor GUI and an ability to create professional website security audit reports.

trueCrypt

Open-Source Disk Encryption Software for Windows and Linux - trueCrypt is an excellent open source disk encryption system. Users can encrypt entire filesystems, which are then on-the-fly encrypted/decrypted as needed without user intervention beyond entering their passphrase intially. A clever hidden volume feature allows you to hide a 2nd layer of particularly sensitive content with plausible deniability about whether it exists. Then if you are forced to give up your passphrase, you give them the first-level secret. Even with that, attackers cannot prove that a second level key even exists.

Watchfire AppScan

Commercial Web Vulnerability Scanner - AppScan provides security testing throughout the application development lifecycle, easing unit testing and security assurance early in the development phase. Appscan scans for many common vulnerabilities, such as cross site scripting, HTTP response splitting, parameter tampering, hidden field manipulation, backdoors/debug options, buffer overflows and more.

N-Stealth

Web server scanner - N-Stealth is a commercial web server security scanner. It is generally updated more frequently than free web scanners such as Whisker/libwhisker and Nikto, but do take their web site with a grain of salt. The claims of "30,000 vulnerabilities and exploits" and "Dozens of vulnerability checks are added every day" are highly questionable. Also note that essentially all general VA tools such as Nessus, ISS Internet Scanner, Retina, SAINT, and Sara include web scanning components. They may not all be as up-to-date or flexible though. N-Stealth is Windows only and no source code is provided.

MBSA

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer - Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is an easy-to-use tool designed for the IT professional that helps small and medium-sized businesses determine their security state in accordance with Microsoft security recommendations and offers specific remediation guidance. Built on the Windows Update Agent and Microsoft Update infrasucture, MBSA ensures consistency with other Microsoft management products including Microsoft Update (MU), Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM). Apparently MBSA on average scans over 3 million computers each week.