IAVA AND NESSUS

The Information Assurance Vulnerability Alert, or IAVA, has for several
years been the method by which agencies within the United States Department
of Defense monitor for and track the resolution of network vulnerabilities.
IAVAs are issued by the DOD-CERT (http://www.cert.mil).

There are three basic kinds of IAVs: 

        * IAVA - alerts of high priority, with an associated date by which
that vulnerability must be eradicated from the network;
        * IAVB - bulletins of medium priority, associated with
vulnerabilities that do not pose an immediate threat to the infrastructure;
        * IAVT - technical notes on vulnerabilities, without remediation
urgency.

IAVAs are almost always associated with one or more CVE numbers. Typically,
a technical note or bulletin is issued when a noteworthy vulnerability first
appears. If later judged to be a threat to the infrastructure, or if more
CVEs associated with that application or service appear which increase the
vulnerability's threat level, then the IAVT or IAVB may be superceded by an
IAVA. 

Many federal agencies are finding it useful to have Nessus scanning for
IAVAs, using the CVE information to correlate with DOD-CERT alerts. IAVAs
are sensitive information, though unclassified, and are not generally made
available to the public in any detail. 

Recently, some IAVAs have begun to be reported by some of Nessus plug-in
scripts. A number of IAVAs are misreported by Nessus. They are:

Correct IAV     CVE                     Name            Script ID
Incorrect Reference
2001-B-0004     CVE-2001-0550   ftpd            10821           2003-A-0009
(in 11332)
2003-B-0006     CAN-2003-0661   ActiveX 11887           2003-A-0029
*               CAN-2003-0822+  FrontPage       11923           2003-A-0033
*               CAN-2003-0346   DirectX 11803           2003-A-0024
2003-A-0012     CAN-2003-0352   MS DCOM 11790           2003-A-0011
2003-A-0012     CAN-2003-0352   MS DCOM 11808           2003-A-0011
2003-A-0014     CAN-2003-0809+  MS IE           10861           2003-A-0018
2003-A-0015     CAN-2003-0543+  OpenSSL 11875           2003-A-0027
2003-A-0016     CAN-2003-0714   MS Exchange     11889           2003-A-0031
2003-A-0017     CAN-2003-0352   MS Mssngr       11890           2003-A-0028
2003-A-0018     CAN-2003-0812   Workstation     11921           2003-A-0032

* In recent documentation, no IAVAs have been posted for their associated
CVE numbers.

The "+" character means that there are multiple CVEs associated with this
vulnerability, but all are detected with the same script.

Please find enclosed with this message corrected copies of the scripts noted
above. If someone with access to the Nessus CVS repository would check these
in after verifying the changes, it would be appreciated.


OTHER NESSUS/IAV NOTES

A document detailing IAVAs and IAVBs from 2001 through 2003, and how they
are reported by Nessus is available to Securify customers through My
Securify (https://my.securify.com).

Please direct all corrections or requests for updates to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- we look forward to helping keep Nessus accurate and up-to-date.


� 2003 Securify, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks belong to their
respective trademark holders.




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