UK govt releasing Nmap scripts to find unpatched vulnerabilities
The United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the government agency that leads UK's cyber security mission, is releasing NMAP Scripting Engine scripts to help defenders scan for and remediate vulnerable systems on their networks.
This is a joint effort between the NCSC and i100 (Industry 100), an initiative that brings together industry and government experts to find solutions to cybersecurity threats. The scripts, authored by i100 partners or security experts who want to share their scripts with the community, will be published on GitHub through a new project named Scanning Made Easy (SME).
"When a software vulnerability is disclosed, it is often easier to find proof-of-concept code to exploit it, than it is to find tools that will help defend your network," the NCSC said today. "To make matters worse, even when there is a scanning script available, it can be difficult to know if it is safe to run, let alone whether it returns valid scan results. Scanning Made Easy (SME) was born out of our frustration with this problem and our desire to help network defenders find vulnerable systems, so they can protect them."
