UK gov cyber agency releases vulnerability scanning scripts

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and its i100 industry partners have launched the 'scanning made easy' project that will release NMAP scripts that administrators can run to find vulnerabilities on their networks.

Created by American security researcher Gordon Lyon, NMAP or network mapper, is a popular open source security tool that can send out data packets across a network to discover hosts on it, and services responding to connections.

NCSC said it set up scanning made easy as it is often easier to find proof-of-concept code for vulnerability exploitation than it is to locate tools that help defend networks.

Even if scanning scripts are available, it is not always guaranteed that they are safe to run or will return valid results, NCSC said.

The UK cyber security agency said the NMAP scripts will be written to SME developer guidelines that ensure the code is easy to read and understand.

NCSC's first SME script will check for multiple, exploited remote code execution vulnerabilities in the Exim mail transfer agent.