Research Release Highlight - Windows OS Field Normalization (English)

Summary

Tenable’s OS identification plugins will now normalize the OS details for Windows scan targets.

Change

Different releases of Microsoft Windows will respond with a variety of information to the queries performed by Nessus and Nessus Agent during credentialed scans that catalog an asset’s operating system. The query results may occasionally present differently based on the different functions used by Nessus and Nessus Agent. Nessus and Nessus Agent will now use a single function to normalize English-language results and present a consistent data point for an asset’s operating system to the user.

Impact

Windows assets whose English-language Operating System field value changed between authenticated scans using Nessus and Nessus Agent will now present a consistent value. Dashboards or Reports that use the “Operating System” field in the Asset data set, and search for a specific Windows value in that field, may need to be updated.

Future updates will add this functionality where necessary for other operating systems as well as other languages.

Plugin

11936 - OS Identification

Target Release

Q4 2023