Scan Stages

^{Last Updated: 2019-06-26}

Purpose

This article describes the different Netsec scan stages.

Introduction

In Outpost24, Scan Stages defines the sequential phases a vulnerability assessment goes through—from port scanning and service fingerprinting to detailed scanning, detection, and reporting. Understanding these stages gives you insight into how the platform progresses through discovery, information gathering, vulnerability matching, and final result output, allowing you to fine-tune performance parameters, anticipate timeouts, and interpret intermediate results during complex security assessments.

Scan Stages

Discovery scan

The Discovery scan sends packages over multiple protocols. If the scanner gets anything back from the target, the target is confirmed to be alive.

Vulnerability scan

There are six stages.

1. Portscan - Sends packages to approximately 5500 ports (default specified port range) for UDP and TCP protocols to find open ports on the target.

2. Fingerprint - This stage uses the ports which were found open in the Portscan stage, to see which services are available on the target.

3. Scanning - It collects the information from the target such as, platform, directories, and versions.

4. Web scan (optional) - This is applicable only for web applications. It crawls over every link found and collects the information about it.

5. Detection - Compares the information collected in the scanning phase with the Outpost24 vulnerability database.

6. Report - Reports all findings found during the scan.