Tool - Nessus

Ok. Here is another tool that the penetration community should already know very well. Nessus is basically a tool to scan and inform about vulnerabilities in open ports. It will report back to you about what it found and why some open ports may be a problem. (a lot more info than nmap) There is also a safe mode and a not-so-safe mode. The un-safe mode will try a larger variety of checks against the node including DoS. So, if you are using it against a work machine... do it after hours or create a clone and do it in a lab. If you were to run it against Windows 98, it would bring it down. ha (i've done it in a lab) ha