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You're reading from  Mastering Linux Security and Hardening

Product typeBook
Published inJan 2018
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ISBN-139781788620307
Edition1st Edition
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Donald A. Tevault
Donald A. Tevault
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Donald A. Tevault

Donald A. Tevault - but you can call him Donnie - got involved with Linux way back in 2006, and has been working with it ever since. He holds the Linux Professional Institute Level 3-Security certification, and the GIAC Incident Handler certification. Donnie is a professional Linux trainer, and thanks to the magic of the internet, teaches Linux classes literally the world over from the comfort of his living room. He's also a Linux security researcher for an IoT security company.
Read more about Donald A. Tevault

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Web server scanning with Nikto


OpenVAS, which we just looked at, is a general-purpose vulnerability scanner. It can find vulnerabilities for any kind of operating system or for any server daemon. However, as we've just seen, an OpenVAS scan can take a while to run, and it might be more than what you need.

Nikto is a special-purpose tool with only one purpose. That is, it's meant to scan web servers and only web servers. It's easy to install, easy to use, and capable of doing a comprehensive scan of a web server fairly quickly. And, although it's included in Kali Linux, you don't need Kali Linux to run it.

Nikto in Kali Linux

If you already have Kali Linux, you'll find that nikto is already installed under the Vulnerability Analysis menu:

When you click on that menu item, you'll open a command-line terminal with a display of the Nikto help screen:

Installing and updating Nikto on Linux

Nikto is in the EPEL repository for Red Hat/CentOS, and it's in the normal repository for Ubuntu. Along with the...

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Mastering Linux Security and Hardening
Published in: Jan 2018Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781788620307

Author (1)

author image
Donald A. Tevault

Donald A. Tevault - but you can call him Donnie - got involved with Linux way back in 2006, and has been working with it ever since. He holds the Linux Professional Institute Level 3-Security certification, and the GIAC Incident Handler certification. Donnie is a professional Linux trainer, and thanks to the magic of the internet, teaches Linux classes literally the world over from the comfort of his living room. He's also a Linux security researcher for an IoT security company.
Read more about Donald A. Tevault