Detecting insecure configurations in MySQL servers

Insecure configurations in databases could be abused by attackers. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) publishes a security benchmark for MySQL, and Nmap can use this to audit the security configurations of a MySQL server.

This recipe shows how to detect insecure configurations in MySQL servers by using Nmap.

How to do it...

To detect insecure configurations in MySQL servers, enter the following command:

$ nmap -p3306 --script mysql-audit --script-args 'mysql-audit.username="<username>",mysql-audit.password="<password>",mysql-audit.filename=/usr/local/share/nmap/nselib/data/mysql-cis.audit' <target>

Each control will be reviewed and a legend of PASS, FAIL, or REVIEW will be included in the results:

PORT     STATE SERVICE 
3306/tcp open  mysql 
| mysql-audit: 
|   CIS MySQL Benchmarks v1.0.2 
|       3.1: Skip symbolic links => PASS 
|       3.2: Logs not on system partition => PASS 
|       3.2: Logs not on database...