Product Reviews

How Secure is Your Network? LANGuard 1.25

Seven network scanners test your security before the crackers do.

• By Greg Saoutine
• 09/01/2001

LANguard is a fast, basic scanner that performs port scans (based on ports defined in its configuration text file, which can be edited by the user), brute force attacks (based on a password text file and character sets), user enumeration and other tasks. In one to two minutes, LANguard was able to collect a fair amount of information about the test system, all of which was correct. The software doesn't report on "vulnerabilities," but produces a list of users enumerated through a NetBIOS NULL session and information obtained via SNMP queries, as shown in the figure.

LANguard provides information in a treeview format. This makes it easy to drill down on the exact security areas you’re most concerned about. (Click image to view larger version.)

For a basic scan of "interesting" ports, password brute force attack and information gathering, LANguard performs the same as any commercial tool. However, lack of vulnerability checking and attack-simulation capabilities limits its ability to provide a comprehensive security assessment of the target host.