Nipper

For years I was using the CIS’ RAT (Router Assessment Tool) to evaluate the security of the configurations of various Cisco devices (firewalls, routers, switches). Then, several years ago, along came Nipper, the(n) free and open source tool doing similar assessment (but finding problems that RAT was not seeing). For several years I was using both tools on the same configurations, combining their results to get a fuller picture.

From the “No good thing stays free for long time” department: Couple of year ago the Nipper’s maker had pulled the Tenable’s Nessus bait-and-switch trick, making Nipper both closed source and commercial (non-free).

• Here is the splinter FOSS project based off the release 0.11: http://code.google.com/p/nipper-ng/.
• Open Source Nipper repository – http://firewallninja.com/nipper/
• An empty project shell, may be worth monitoring: Nipper Router Audit – http://nipperrouteraud.sourceforge.net/.
• Another empty shell for an associated project: NipperME (‘Nipper Made Easy’) – http://sourceforge.net/projects/nipperme/, is a GUI application that sits on top of the commandline tool Nipper located at http://nipper.titania.co.uk/ This tool provides Nipper commandline options presented to you in a nicely laid out GUI.
• article “Audit your Cisco router’s security with Nipper” by David Davis (TechRepublic, 2007.12.17) – http://www.zdnetasia.com/audit-your-cisco-router-s-security-with-nipper-62035512.htm