Rapid7 Nexpose introduces IPv6 discovery and scanning capabilities

Rapid7 announced that the new version of its vulnerability management solution, Rapid7 Nexpose, introduces features for discovering and scanning IPv6 assets that organizations may not even know they have.

“Security professionals are overwhelmed by information. It’s increasingly complex for them to even identify what assets the organization has, let alone associated threats and the steps needed to improve their security posture,” said Richard Perkett, vice president of Engineering at Rapid7.

“Rapid7 simplifies this process by pioneering dynamic discovery of assets that are otherwise hard to track, such as IPv6 and virtual assets. Combined with Nexpose’s remediation prioritization and vulnerability filtering, the result is efficiency in identifying the threats and actions that will make a real difference to the organization’s security posture, thereby increasing the credibility of security teams across the organization,” he added.

Discovery and scanning for IPv6

Approximately 95% of IPv4 address space has already been allocated1 and with devices increasingly requiring one or many IPs, the transition to the next generation, IPv6, is not far off. In fact, while most organizations believe they are not yet deploying IPv6, many devices are enabled for it by default. This represents a significant risk due to a number of factors, starting with a lack of IPv6 readiness in security products. Meanwhile, attackers are starting to recognize the opportunities in IPv6 as an attack vector and can tunnel in through IPv4 devices to then exploit the IPv6 vulnerabilities currently not being identified and addressed.

This threat is amplified by the difficulty that security professionals encounter in finding IPv6 assets in existing IPv4 production environments. The new edition of Nexpose addresses this by dynamically discovering IPv6 and IPv4 assets and scanning both for vulnerabilities.

With Nexpose you can:

• Perform an IPv6 discovery over an IPv4 network, thereby enabling organizations to disable IPv6 devices in IPv4 networks as they could present a potential security risk
• Create a dynamic asset group and find assets with known IPv4 addresses that also have previously undiscovered IPv6 addresses, creating significant efficiencies by automating traditionally manual processes
• Run a report to show IPv6 enabled devices
• Conduct a scan to discover vulnerabilities in these IPv6 devices
• Export data to Metasploit and then run a risk assessment to validate risk based on exploits.

Vulnerability filtering

One of the hardest challenges security professionals face is discerning which “signals” they really need to listen to amongst all the “noise” they hear. In the case of vulnerability scanning, it is common for security professionals to receive reports of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of vulnerabilities.

Identifying which of these are the most critical and should be addressed first is a complex challenge. Nexpose already simplifies this by providing contextual risk information based on exploit exposure, malware exposure, malware kits and the age of vulnerabilities identified, all of which impact the risk factor. Rather than providing generic advice on what vulnerabilities should be patched, it specifically prescribes steps on what needs to be remediated or mitigated based on the specific environment.

With the new version of Nexpose, Rapid7 provides capabilities for reducing the signal-to-noise ratio for vulnerability management. Users can now also filter asset and vulnerability information into groups that make sense to the organization and its structure. This enables users to produce reports with a sharper focus on specific security issues, giving remediation teams the exact information they need to do their jobs and eliminate the “noise” of extraneous vulnerability data. For example, users can generate reports that only include Adobe vulnerabilities.

Likewise, users can exclude certain categories, such as for a particular platform or service for which they have a patch program in place. Being able to tailor the information for their audience in this way increases the credibility and relevance of security teams, promoting greater collaboration with IT operations.