A Brief Introduction to the OpenVAS Vulnerability Scanner

What Is the OpenVAS Vulnerability Scanner?

The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a vulnerability scanner maintained and distributed by Greenbone Networks. It is intended to be an all-in-one vulnerability scanner with a variety of built-in tests and a Web interface designed to make setting up and running vulnerability scans fast and easy while providing a high level of user configurability.

Feeds

Greenbone is the company that operates OpenVAS and offers the vulnerability scanner as a free or paid version. The main difference is in the feed of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) used by the scanner.

The paid version of the feed is called the Greenbone Security Feed, while the free version of the feed is called the Greenbone Community Feed. Both feeds are updated on a daily basis and include the most recent threats.

The main difference between the two feeds is that the Greenbone Security Feed includes some advanced NVTs specifically targeted for enterprise environments. This difference does not affect the tool’s usability for the casual user but may be important for a pen tester using it for enterprise-level engagements.

Getting Started With OpenVAS

OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner designed to run in a Linux environment. It can be installed either as a self-contained virtual machine or from source code provided under GNU General Public License (GPL). In this section, we discuss how to install the OpenVAS scanner and how to run your first scan.

Installation

OpenVAS is designed to be a self-contained vulnerability scanning framework. It is available either as a virtual machine or as source code that can be compiled and installed on an existing Linux machine. In this section, we discuss how to set up each of these two options.

Virtual Machine

If you plan to use the OpenVAS virtual machine, you will need a (Read more...)