SARA Report Writer

What about this Report Writer ?

The Report Writer is designed to generate HTML documents which are easy to import into Micosoft Word. A sample report illustrates the information and hyperlinking capabilities of the Report Writer. When properly imported into Microsoft Word, all hyperlinks are preserved. In addition, the SARA developers are providing report writer functionality to the SATAN and SAINT communities!

The Report Writer options are selected through the configuration screen with the following:

• Generate Full Report: SARA Pro will generate a bar chart, scan summary table, scan details, and vulnerability tutorials.

• Generate SARA Table & Bar Chart Only: SARA Pro will not generate the scan details nor the vulnerability tutorials.

• Use Default Report Parameters: SARA Pro will generate a report item on each host scanned, regardless of status.

• Select Report Options: SARA Pro will base the report on the checkboxes selected.
  • Only Include Hosts if SANS-10 Vulnerabilities Found: The SANS organization has developed a list of the 10 most common/serious vulnerabilities found in the "wild". The report writer will report on only those hosts that have one or more of the SANS-10 vulnerabilities. The SARA distribution has the appropriate configuration file. SATAN and SAINT users will have to build this file manually since the criteria will be different.
  • Exclude hosts with no vulnerabilities: Hosts that have services but no vulnerabilities will not be included in the report.
  • Exclude Windows hosts: No Windows host will be included in the report.
  • Exclude only Windows hosts (special): Windows hosts with Red and/or Yellow vulnerabilities will be included in the report. Other Windows hosts will be excluded.
  • Exclude tutorial in report: The tutorials will not be included in the report. However, the hyperlinks in the scan details will remain. SATAN and SAINT will not have tutorial output as their format is different than SARA's.
  • Bar chart reflect selection options: Normally the bar chart will not exclude any hosts in its depiction. Selection of this option will force the bar chart to conform to the other options selected.

How do I convert to a Word Document ?

The Report Writer is tailored to generate documents that are easily imported to Microsoft Word. For instance, bookmarks and hyperlinks are set to conform to Microsoft's strange conventions.

The following are the steps to generate a Word friendly report:

• There are two files in the $html_root/reporting directory named report.prefix and report.postfix. Edit these documents to reflect your reporting needs. (only applicable to SARA)
• Select the SARA Pro Reporter under "SARA Reporting and Analysis" and follow the instructions described above.
• When the report is generated, save the output (File -> Save As)
• Open this file in Microsoft Word and immediately save it as a Word document.
• We have had good luck formatting it with the following:
  • Perform a Edit -> Select All
  • Perform a Format -> Font -> Set Font size to 10
  • Perform a Format -> Paragraph
    • Set Spacing (Before and After) to 0 pt
    • Set Line Spacing to "At Least"
  • Save the document.

Please Note that links of documents saved by Internet Explorer in remote access mode will not work. IE insists on expanding all local references to full URLs.