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Re: How to tell what's new

To: rgula@tenablesecurity.com
Subject: Re: How to tell what's new
From: Bob Babcock <rbabcock@cfa.harvard.edu>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 11:18:20 -0400 (EDT)
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In-reply-to: <465E9A95.50808@tenablesecurity.com> (message from Ron Gula on Thu, 31 May 2007 05:51:17 -0400)
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> > I use Nessus for Windows.  I turn off some of the plugins in some families
> > so I see mostly vulnerabilities in my reports.  But once you start selecting
> > individual plugins rather than families, plugin updates become a problem.
> > You don't know what's new, so you have to review the plugin lists.  Is there
> > a way to tell what's changed or new?  All the plugins get the current date
> > when I update.  I suppose I could make a copy of the plugin directory and 
> > use
> > a differencing program, but it seems there should be a better way.
> 
> Hi Bob,
> 
> Have you considered the RSS plugin feed?
> 
> http://www.nessus.org/rss-plugins.xml
> 
> This is updated as soon as Tenable releases a new plugin.

There's certainly useful info in this feed, but it isn't directly coupled to
the state of installed plugins on my scanning pc.  I make the problem worse
by only using Nessus intermittently.  (We use mainly Shavlik for scanning and
deploying to Windows machines, but Nessus checks for things that Shavlik does
not.)

I did try making a copy of the plugins directory, updating plugins and
running WinMerge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/winmerge/) to see what
changed.  It worked much better than I expected.  In particular, comparing
the plugins by content took only a few seconds.  This will meet my needs.
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