Plugin 11936 does not always produce results

[Rakesh Thakoordyal]

Hello,

I am using Nessus (Nessus 2.2.10 for Linux) to take advantage of the Plugin 11936 in order to identify the OS of the systems that are being scanned.  I am running Nessus from the command line and outputting the results in an XML file.  However I find that not all systems produce OS results for this Plugin. 

Here is a sample of the results where the plugin worked.  There are 2 relevant sections to a file where the 11936 Plugin has produced results:

<plugin id="11936">
                        <name>OS Identification</name>
                        <version>$Revision: 1.155 $</version>
                        <family>General</family>
                        <cve_id>NOCVE</cve_id>
                        <bugtraq_id>NOBID</bugtraq_id>
                        <category>infos</category>
                        <risk>Unknown</risk>
                        <summary>Determines the remote operating system</summary>
                        <copyright>This script is Copyright (C) 2003 - 2007 Tenable Network Security</copyright>
                </plugin>

AND

 <id>11936</id>
                                <data>


                                                        Remote operating system : Windows Server 2003 3790 Service Pack 2
                                                        Confidence Level : 99
                                                        Method : MSRPC


                                                        The remote host is running Windows Server 2003 3790 Service Pack 2

                                </data>

**********************************************************************

However for machines where the plugin cannot detect the OS, I only get the first part, like this:

<plugin id="11936">
                        <name>OS Identification</name>
                        <version>$Revision: 1.155 $</version>
                        <family>General</family>
                        <cve_id>NOCVE</cve_id>
                        <bugtraq_id>NOBID</bugtraq_id>
                        <category>infos</category>
                        <risk>Unknown</risk>
                        <summary>Determines the remote operating system</summary>
                        <copyright>This script is Copyright (C) 2003 - 2007 Tenable Network Security</copyright>
                </plugin>

i.e. there is no section with the guessed OS being reported.

Is there a reason for this?  Please let me know if you require any information about the Nessus configuration in order to assist.

Thank You so much.

[George A. Theall]

Post by Rakesh Thakoordyal
I am using Nessus (Nessus 2.2.10 for Linux) to take advantage of the
Plugin 11936 in order to identify the OS of the systems that are
being scanned. I am running Nessus from the command line and
outputting the results in an XML file. However I find that not all
systems produce OS results for this Plugin.

...

Post by Rakesh Thakoordyal
Is there a reason for this?

It could be that none of the other OS fingerprinting plugins were able
to identify the result at all. For example, there's a plugin that
looks for the name of the OS in the web server's banner, but if
there's no web server, no banner, or the banner simply doesn't have
anything beyond, say, "Server: Apache", then the results of that
particular plugin can't be used in plugin #11936 itself.

That said, if you are supplying valid credentials such that Nessus is
able to log into the targets, then you should get results, and
accurate ones at that.

George