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Five free pen-testing tools

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By Jon Espenschied
Computerworld | May 27, 2008 1:00 AM PT

Security assessment and deep testing don't require a big budget. Some of most effective
security tools are free, and are commonly used by professional consultants, private
industry and government security practitioners. Here are a few to start with.
For scanning in the first steps of a security assessment or pen test, Nmap and Nessus share
the crown. Nmap is a simple, powerful and very well-reviewed scanner that one finds in
the toolbox of any serious security consultant. Nmap and its Zenmap graphical interface
are free and available at nmap.org for virtually any platform from Vista and OS X to
AmigaOS, and will happily run on low-power systems.
Nessus performs scans and up-to-date vulnerability testing in one interface, through a
purchased "feed" of vulnerability modules for the freely downloadable application. A free
but delayed noncommercial "home feed" of updates will continue to be available at
nessus.org after Tenable Inc. changes the Nessus license this coming July.
The Metasploit Framework provides more operating system and application exploit
information than most analysts would know what to do with. Recently rewritten in Ruby
with a graphical interface, it comes with several hundred common exploit modules in the
basic download available at metasploit.com. For testing Web applications specifically, the
well-regarded Nikto has also undergone recent updates and is available at cirt.net/nikto2.
Wireshark provides top-notch network protocol capture and analysis, and its filtering and
search functions make a good noninvasive tool for beginners interested in TCP/IP. This
high-quality successor to the long-running Ethereal tool is available for Windows, Linux
and Mac. The "Buy" button at wireshark.org leads to a happy reminder that it's free and
open source.
KisMAC's simple interface belies its powerful wireless assessment and penetration testing
features. This OS X application is available at trac.kismac-ng.org, where one can also find
an active support community. Kismet, its more powerful but less friendly progenitor, is
available at kismetwireless.net for Linux and Windows. There are active communities and
numerous add-ons for each.

For more information, Fyodor, the author of Nmap, maintains a somewhat dated but good
list at sectools.org of the top hundred open-source and low-cost security tools other
than Nmap.
(Willing to spend some money for your assessment tech? We've got you covered.)

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