By Bozidar Spirovski, CISSP, MCSA, MCP

We have mentioned our favorite vulnerability scanning tools before.

But a lot of time has passed since, so it is time to put these tools against each other and evaluate the quality of the results received when scanning the same target.

The Test Environment

The tested vulnerability scanning tools were installed on a Windows 7 Pro PC.

• Nessus server and client were installed and updated to the latest plugins.


• Retina 5.10.18.2135 Evaluation version was downloaded and installed. The Evaluation version does not allow updates, so we used what updates are included in the build.

The target was Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) version 1.5 installed as a VMWARE host with bridged networking on the same host PC as the vulnerability scanning tools.

The network of the DVL target was bridged, and all firewalls (both of the host OS and the guest OS) were disabled.

The DVL was started with the following services, with default settings and content as included in the distro.

• MySQL


• HTTP


• IPP Printer sharing which was active by default

The Scanning Proce