Sara, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), has requested an audit take place to determine what services
and operating systems are running on the corporate network. Which of the following should be used to
complete this task?

A.
Fingerprinting and password crackers

B.
Fuzzing and a port scan

C.
Vulnerability scan and fuzzing

D.
Port scan and fingerprinting

Explanation:
Different services use different ports. When a service is enabled on a computer, a network port is opened
for that service. For example, enabling the HTTP service on a web server will open port 80 on the server.
By determining which ports are open on a remote server, we can determine which services are running
on that server.
A port scanner is a software application designed to probe a server or host for open ports. This is often
used by administrators to verify security policies of their networks and by attackers to identify running
services on a host with the view to compromise it.
A port scan or portscan can be defined as a process that sends client requests to a range of server port
addresses on a host, with the goal of finding an active port. While not a nefarious process in and of itself,
it is one used by hackers to probe target machine services with the aim of exploiting a known vulnerability
of that service. However the majority of uses of a port scan are not attacks and are simple probes to
determine services available on a remote machine.Fingerprinting is a means of ascertaining the operating system of a remote computer on a network.
Fingerprinting is more generally used to detect specific versions of applications or protocols that are run
on network servers. Fingerprinting can be accomplished “passively” by sniffing network packets passing
between hosts, or it can be accomplished “actively” by transmitting specially created packets to the
target machine and analyzing the response
Incorrect Answers:
A: Fingerprinting is a means of ascertaining the operating system of a remote computer on a network.
However, a password cracker is not used to determine which services are running on network computers.
B: A port scan can be used to determine which services are running on network computers. However
fuzzing is not used to determine which operating system the computers are running. Fuzzing is a security
assessment technique that allows testers to analyze the behavior of software applications by entering
unexpected input.
C: A vulnerability scanner is software designed to assess computers, computer systems, networks or
applications for weaknesses. A vulnerability scan will scan for weaknesses (vulnerabilities) in a system. It
could provide information about which services are running but it is not specifically designed for this
purpose. Fuzzing is not used to determine which operating system the computers are running or which
services are running on the computers. Fuzzing is a security assessment technique that allows testers to
analyze the behavior of software applications by entering unexpected input.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_scanner
http://www.yourdictionary.com/fingerprinting