The Sussen Security Scanner [LWN.net]

The Sussen security scanner project is designed to assist in scanning for security vulnerabilities on remote hosts.

"Sussen is a security scanner which remotely tests computers or other devices and provides a report on their vulnerabilities." [Sussen]

A brief summary of Sussen features includes:

Support for the GNOME desktop environment.
Works with a number of free and commercial databases.
Includes Python-language security testing software.
Produces a variety of customizable reports.
Has built-in druid windows for common tasks.
Includes policy and plugin editors.
Configuration is XML-based.
Includes language translations.
Has a built-in help system.

Sussen consists of three components, Sussen, Sussen-sensor, and Sussen-plugins.

Sussen is the user interface for the GNOME environment.
Sussen-sensor is the server component that carries out the security scans.
Sussen-plugins are Python based security tests that are used by Sussen and Sussen-sensor.

Recently, new versions of the project have been coming out at a rate of one per month. This week, version 0.9 was announced. The release includes bug fixes and quite a long list of new features to the three components. The release came out with this caveat: "Sussen is not currently suited for production use. Many features are incomplete or not working at all." Nonetheless, Sussen could still prove to be useful to the system administrator who is looking to find and plug security holes on their network.

A brief attempt at installation of the three RPMs for the latest version of Sussen resulted in a long list (16 items) of failed dependencies. Those wishing to install Sussen on Red Hat 9 may end up spending some time hunting for extra RPMs.

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