Recently the company Rapid7 acquired Metasploit, the open source Penetration Testing Framework developed by HD Moore. As I personally never heared about Rapid7 in the past, I took a look at what products Rapid7 is currently offering. I am currently a Nessus ProfessionalFeed subscriber, and, although I really love Nessus and think it is a great piece of software for vulnerability and compliance assessments, I am not satisfied with the quality of the reports it produces.
Rapid7 offers a Community Edition (read: free for personal  and commercial use; limited to scanning 38 hosts) version of their NeXpose software, so I thought I’d give it a try.

After applying for a license for the Community Edition I was happy to get a license key assigned.  I downloaded the NeXpose installer for the Windows OS (32 bit edition), and the installation of the software went smoothly.

The installation creates a desktop icon that runs nsc.bat. After runnin this file, the NexPose server should start, and it should be possible to connect to the server via browsing to http://127.0.0.1:3780

The server however doesn’t work on my system after a successfull installation. (Update: issue identified – Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 2008 are currently not supported yet)

The following output is shown after running nsc.bat.

C:\Program Files\rapid7\nexpose\nsc>nsc.bat
 Copying server libs
 Validating jre in directory _jvm
 Using jre at _jvm
 PATH: .DLLCACHE;..\_jvm\bin;..\_jvm\bin\server;%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Sh
 ared\Windows Live;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Pro
 gram Files\Intel\DMIX;C:\Program Files\NTRU Cryptosystems\NTRU TCG Software Stac
 k\bin\;C:\Program Files\Wave Systems Corp\Gemalto\Access Client\v5\;C:\Program F
 iles\Intel\WiFi\bin\;c:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\;c:\Pr
 ogram Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\10.0\DLLShared\;C:\Windows\System32\Window
 sPowerShell\v1.0\;c:\tools;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files
 \IBM\Rational AppScan\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Li
 ve;C:\Program Files\Nmap;C:\Program Files\Nmap;C:\Program Files\Nmap
 Logging to file C:\Program Files\rapid7\nexpose\update.log
 Copying server libs
 Validating jre in directory _jvm
 Using jre at _jvm
 PATH: .DLLCACHE;..\_jvm\bin;..\_jvm\bin\server;.DLLCACHE;..\_jvm\bin;..\_jvm\bin
 \server;%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Windows\system32;C
 :\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Intel\DMIX;C:\Program Files\
 NTRU Cryptosystems\NTRU TCG Software Stack\bin\;C:\Program Files\Wave Systems Co
 rp\Gemalto\Access Client\v5\;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;c:\Program Files\C
 ommon Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\;c:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\1
 0.0\DLLShared\;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;c:\tools;C:\Program F
 iles\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\IBM\Rational AppScan\;C:\Program Files
 \Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Program Files\Nmap;C:\Program Fil
 es\Nmap;C:\Program Files\Nmap
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: Logging initialized (system time zone is Australi
 a/Sydney)
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: initializing JDBC drivers
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: NeXpose is running interactively under super-user
 : Wouter
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: System memory: 3534MB total (939MB free)
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: System speed: 2394MHz (x2)
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: Running first-time configuration
 Nexpose     13/03/10 12:37 PM: Configuring PostgreSQL installation in C:\Program
 Files\rapid7\nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Verifying permissions on C:\Program Files\rapid7\
 nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Verifying disk space on C:\Program Files\rapid7\n
 expose\nsc\nxpgsql
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Postgres data directory already exists. Cleaning
 up. C:\Program Files\rapid7\nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql\nxpdata
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Creating data directory in C:\Program Files\rapid
 7\nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql\nxpdata
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Recursively adding access rights of C:\Program Fi
 les\rapid7\nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql to SYSTEM
 PostgresInst13/03/10 12:37 PM: Adding access rights from root to C:\Program File
 s\rapid7\nexpose\nsc\nxpgsql to Wouter
 SetFileSecurity failed
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: A critical error occured during initialization: c
 om.rapid7.os.OSException: insertAccessAllowedACE failed: Access is denied.

at com.rapid7.os.win32.OSProvider.insertUserIntoACL(Native Method)
 at com.rapid7.os.win32.OSProvider.insertUserIntoACL(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.os.win32.OSProvider.insertUserRights(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.util.D.F(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.util.C.J(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.FirstTimeConfigurator.A(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.FirstTimeConfigurator.configure(Unknown Source
 )
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.¾(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.¶(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.§(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.run(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.main(Unknown Source)

NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: Error during server initialization: java.lang.Nul
 lPointerException
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.§(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.run(Unknown Source)
 at com.rapid7.nexpose.nsc.NSC.main(Unknown Source)

NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: Shutting down immediately
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: shutting down config manager
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: Shutting down database
 NSC         13/03/10 12:37 PM: shutting down logging
 : shutting down console
 NeXpose Server exited with code 0
 Finished.

C:\Program Files\rapid7\nexpose\nsc>

I contacted Rapid7 regarding this issue, but until date (14 days later!) and 2 reminders later I did not receive feedback from them how I can resolve this issue.  If you have any idea what could cause this error, let me know!

Interim conclusion: Would I recommend installing the Community Edition? Sure! I heared it is supposed to be good! Would I consider myself buying or recommending someone the commercial version? No.  My first impressions of the Rapid7 support services and the application’s Windows compatibility are not the best. Once I get the Community Edition up and running I will reconsider my conclusion.

Update: Issue was related due to installing NeXpose on one of the currently not supported OS’es – I installed it on Vista.  I’ll give the Linux installer a go today!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.