Plaintext Authentication

Caution: Using plaintext credentials is not recommended. Use encrypted authentication methods when possible.

If a secure method of performing credentialed checks is not available, you can configure Tenable Vulnerability Management to perform checks over unsecure protocols using the Plaintext Authentication settings.

Note: Some credential types may not be available for configuration, depending on the scan template you selected.
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Setting Default

Description

 Required
Authentication method HTTP Login Form

The authentication method.

Supported values are:

  • Automatic authentication
  • Basic/Digest authentication
  • HTTP login form — Controls where authenticated testing of a custom web-based application begins.
  • HTTP cookies import — Facilitates web application testing by using cookies imported from another piece of software (e.g., web browser, web proxy, etc.). when attempting to access a web application.
 yes
Method: Automatic Authentication
Username – Login user's name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Method: Basic/Digest authentication
Username – Login user's name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Method: HTTP login form

Username

 –

Login user’s name.

 yes

Password

 –

Password of the user specified.

 yes

Login page

 –

The absolute path to the login page of the application, e.g., /login.html.

 yes

Login submission page

 –

The action parameter for the form method. For example, the login form for <form method="POST" name="auth_form" action="/login.php"> would be /login.php.

 yes

Login parameters

 –

Specify the authentication parameters (e.g., login=%USER%&password=%PASS%). If the keywords %USER% and %PASS% are used, the keywords will be substituted with values supplied on the Login configurations drop-down menu. This field can be used to provide more than two parameters if required (e.g., a group name or some other piece of information is required for the authentication process).

 yes

Check authentication on page

 –

The absolute path of a protected web page that requires authentication, to better assist Tenable Vulnerability Management in determining authentication status, e.g., /admin.html.

 yes

Regex to verify successful authentication

 –

A regex pattern to look for on the login page. Simply receiving a 200 response code is not always sufficient to determine session state. Tenable Vulnerability Management can attempt to match a given string such as Authentication successful!

 yes
Method: HTTP cookies import
Cookies file –

Upload a cookie file. The file must be in Netscape format.

 yes
All methods: Scan-wide Credential Type Settings

Login method

POST

Specify if the login action is performed via a GET or POST request.

 yes

Re-authenticate delay (seconds)

0

The time delay between authentication attempts. Setting a time delay is useful to avoid triggering brute force lockout mechanisms.

 yes

Follow 30x redirections

(# of levels)

0

If a 30x redirect code is received from a web server, this setting directs Tenable Vulnerability Management to follow the link provided or not.

 yes

Invert authenticated regex

Disabled

A regex pattern to look for on the login page, that if found, tells Tenable Vulnerability Management that authentication was not successful (e.g., Authentication failed!).

 no

Use authenticated regex on HTTP headers

Disabled

Rather than search the body of a response, Tenable Vulnerability Management can search the HTTP response headers for a given regex pattern to better determine authentication state.

 no

Case insensitive authenticated regex

Disabled

The regex searches are case sensitive by default. This instructs Tenable Vulnerability Management to ignore case.

 no
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Setting Default Value Description Required?
Username – Login user’s name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes

SNMPv1/v2c configuration allows you to use community strings for authentication to network devices. You can configure up to four SNMP community strings.

Setting Default Value Description Required
Community string public The community string Tenable Vulnerability Management uses to authenticate on the host device. yes
Scan-wide Credential Type Settings

UDP Port

 161 Ports where Tenable Vulnerability Management attempts to authenticate on the host device. no
Additional UDP port #1 161 no
Additional UDP port #2 161 no
Additional UDP port #3 161 no

Tenable Vulnerability Management performs patch auditing on non-Windows targets only.

Setting Default Value Description Required
Username – Login user's name. yes
Password – Password of the user specified. yes
Scan-wide Credential Type Settings
Perform patch audits over telnet Disabled Tenable Vulnerability Management uses telnet to connect to the host device for patch audits. no
Perform patch audits over rsh Disabled Tenable Vulnerability Management uses rsh to connect to the host device for patch audits. no
Perform patch audits over rexec Disabled Tenable Vulnerability Management uses rexec to connect to the host device for patch audits. no