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OpenVAS - Open Vulnerability Assessment System

OpenVAS stands for Open Vulnerability Assessment System and is a network security scanner with associated tools like a graphical user front-end. The core component is a server with a set of network vulnerability tests (NVTs) to detect security problems in remote systems and applications.

About OpenVAS Server

The OpenVAS Server is the core application of the OpenVAS project. It is a scanner that runs many network vulnerability tests against many target hosts and delivers the results. It uses a communication protocol to have client tools (graphical end-user or batched) connect to it, configure and execute a scan and finally receive the results for reporting. Tests are implemented in the form of plugins which need to be updated to cover recently identified security issues.

The server consists of 4 modules: openvas-libraries, openvas-libnasl, openvas-server and openvas-plugins. All need to be installed for a fully functional server.

OpenVAS server is a forked development of Nessus 2.2. The fork happened because the major development (Nessus 3) changed to a proprietary license model and the development of Nessus 2.2.x is practically closed for third party contributors. OpenVAS continues as Free Software under the GNU General Public License with a transparent and open development style.

About OpenVAS-Client


OpenVAS-Client is a terminal and GUI client application for both OpenVAS and Nessus. It implements the Nessus Transfer Protocol (NTP). The GUI is implemented using GTK+ 2.4 and allows for managing network vulnerability scan sessions.OpenVAS-Client is a successor of NessusClient 1.X.

 
The fork happened with NessusClient CVS HEAD 20070704. The reason was that the original authors of NessusClient decided to stop active development for this (GTK-based) NessusClient in favor of a newly written QT-based version released as proprietary software.

OpenVAS-Client is released under GNU GPLv2 and may be linked with OpenSSL.

You can download OpenVAS here:
OpenVAS Client
OpenVAS Server


1 comments:

Peter said...

Keep in mind that another option other than the client, is to use the command line to launch scans. This is excellent for creating batch jobs or scheduled scans.

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