Reading RHOSTS from a file.

[mmiller at hick.org (mmiller at hick.org)]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 10:39:08PM +0000, Kashif Iftikhar wrote:
>  I need suggestions to implement a way to read target hosts from a
> file similar to the RHOSTS parameter in most scanner modules of type
> OptAddressRange. What would be the best way to implement it? Should I
> try adding another option type say 'OptAddressRangeFromFile' that
> takes in a filename and reads addresses from it and then converts it
> into address range sets? Or creating a plugin that adds a command to
> MSF say 'read_addresses_from_file' and stores it into the specified
> option?

I think one of the easier options would be to add a new option class
called OptAddressRangeOrPath.  This would allow you to specify either an
address range or a path to a file that contains address range(s).  The
option validator would accept either case.  We'd just need to add an
abstraction in the scanner mixin that would automatically read from the
file and then process each of the embedded range(s).

The problem with doing it by adding a new option is that you can't
currently have both RHOSTS and RHOSTSFILE (for example) be required, as
it wouldn't make sense in this case.  By switching RHOSTS to something
that can either be a range or a file, it's easier to support.  This kind
of munges the structure of RHOSTS, but it doesn't seem like it'd be too
bad.