OpenVAS Vulnerability Scanner




         

Vulnerability scanning is a crucial phase of a penetration test and having an updated vulnerability scanner in your security toolkit can often make a real difference by helping you discover overlooked vulnerable items. OpenVAS is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution.
The actual security scanner is accompanied with a regularly updated feed of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs), over 47,000 in total (as of June 2016).
All OpenVAS products are Free Software. Most components are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
 
 

Architecture Overview



The OpenVAS Manager is the central service that consolidates plain vulnerability scanning into a full vulnerability management solution. The Manager controls the Scanner via OTP (OpenVAS Transfer Protocol) and itself offers the XML-based, stateless OpenVAS Management Protocol (OMP). All intelligence is implemented in the Manager so that it is possible to implement various lean clients that will behave consistently e.g. with regard to filtering or sorting scan results. The Manager also controls a SQL database (sqlite-based) where all configuration and scan result data is centrally stored. Finally, Manager also handles user management includiung access control with groups and roles.

 
Different OMP clients are available: The Greenbone Security Assistant (GSA) is a lean web service offering a user interface for web browsers. GSA uses XSL transformation stylesheet that converts OMP responses into HTML.
OpenVAS CLI contains the command line tool "omp" which allows to create batch processes to drive OpenVAS Manager. Another tool of this package is a Nagios plugin.
The OpenVAS Scanner offers the communication protocol OTP (OpenVAS Transfer Protocol) which allows to control the scan execution. This protocol is subject to be eventually replaced and thus it is not recommended to develop OTP clients.

Feature overview

  • OpenVAS Scanner
    • Many target hosts are scanned concurrently
    • OpenVAS Transfer Protocol (OTP)
    • SSL support for OTP (always)
    • WMI support (optional)
OpenVAS Manager
  • OpenVAS Management Protocol (OMP)
  • SQL Database (sqlite) for configurations and scan results
  • SSL support for OMP (always)
  • Many concurrent scans tasks (many OpenVAS Scanners)
  • Notes management for scan results
  • False Positive management for scan results
  • Scheduled scans
  • Flexible escalators upon status of a scan task
  • Stop, Pause and Resume of scan tasks
  • Master-Slave Mode to control many instances from a central one
  • Reports Format Plugin Framework with various plugins for: XML, HTML, LateX, etc.
  • User Management
  • Feed status view
  • Feed synchronisation
Greenbone Security Assistant (GSA)
  • Client for OMP and OAP
  • HTTP and HTTPS
  • Web server on its own (microhttpd), thus no extra web server required
  • Integrated online-help system
  • Multi-language support
OpenVAS CLI
  • Client for OMP
  • Runs on Windows, Linux, etc.
  • Plugin for Nagios



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