Re: How does nessus know exactly which application is running

[Renaud Deraison <deraison_at_nessus.org>]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 03:28:59AM -0800, alan donald wrote:
>  I am a bit confused. I dont seem to understand how
>  nessus is knowing which application is running.
>  Since
>  it has to know this information in order to launch
>  an
>  exploit. 
>  
>  Is it just matching a banner
>  OR
>  does it have a database of responses for each
>  application like maybe nmap does. 
>  OR
>  It is fingerprinting the application in some other
>  way.

It recognizes the application based on the banner and/or error message
replied to the request it sent. find_services.nes has been doing that
for a couple of years now.


				-- Renaud