Reporting vulnerability checks performed during a scan

Nmap can be turned into a vulnerability scanner by using NSE scripts. The library vuln manages and unifies the output of the vulnerability checks performed by the Nmap Scripting Engine.

This recipe will show you how to make Nmap report the vulnerability checks that are performed.

How to do it...

Launch the NSE scripts in the vuln category against your target, by using the following command:

nmap -sV --script vuln <target>

If you are lucky, you will see a vulnerability report:

PORT     STATE SERVICE REASON
306/tcp open  mysql   syn-ack
 mysql-vuln-cve2012-2122:
   VULNERABLE:
   Authentication bypass in MySQL servers.
     State: VULNERABLE
     IDs:  CVE:CVE-2012-2122
     Description:
       When a user connects to MariaDB/MySQL, a token (SHA
       over a password and a random scramble string) is calculated and compared
       with the expected value. Because of incorrect casting, it might've
       happened that the token and...