NESSUS(1) Users Manuals NESSUS(1)NAMEnessus - The client part of the Nessus Security Scanner
SYNOPSISnessus [-v] [-h] [-n] [-T <type>] [-q [-pPS] host port user password
targets results]
nessus-i in.[nsr|nbe] -o out.[html|xml|nsr|nbe]
DESCRIPTION
The Nessus Security Scanner is a security auditing tool made up of two
parts: a server, and a client. The server, nessusd is in charge of the
attacks, whereas the client nessus provides an interface to the user.
nessus is an X11 client based on the Gimp ToolKit (GTK).
This man page explains how to use the client.
OPTIONS-c <config-file>, --config-file=<config-file>
use another configuration file.
-n, --no-pixmaps
no pixmaps. This is handy if you are running nessus on a remote
computer.
-q, --batch-mode
quiet mode or batch mode. Setting this option makes the nessus
client expect all of the following settings.
-p
obtain list of plugins installed on the server.
-P
obtain list of server and plugin preferences.
-S
issue SQL output for -p and -P (experimental).
· host
is the nessusd host to whom you will connect.
· port
is the port to which you will connect on the remote nes‐
susd host.
· user
is the user name to use to connect to nessusd.
· password
is the password associated with this user name.
· targets
is the name of a file containing the target machines.
· results
is the name of the file where the results will be stored
at the end of the test.
-r <report-file>, --open-report=<report-file>
Using the GUI, nessus visualizes a report file from a previous
session. Repeating this option, more files are displayed.
-T <type>, --output-type=<type>"
Save the data as <type>, where <type> can be “nbe”, “html”,
“html_graph”, “text”, “xml”, “old-xml”, “tex” or “nsr”
-V, --verbose
make the batch mode display status messages to the screen.
-x, --dont-check-ssl-cert
do not check SSL certificates.
-v, --version
shows version number and quits
-h, --help
lists the available options
The X11 interface
The nessus client interface is divided in several panels:
· The “Nessusd host” section:
In this section, you must enter the nessusd host to whom you
will connect, as well as the port. You must also enter your nes‐
susd user name and your password (not the one of the system).
Once you are done, you must click on the “Log in” button, which
will establish the connection to the nessusd host.
Once the connection is established, nessusd sends to the client
the list of attacks it will perform, as well as the default
preferences to use.
· The “Target Selection” section:
· In this section, you are required to enter the primary target.
A primary target may be a single host (e.g. prof.fr.nessus.org),
an IP (e.g. 192.168.1.1), a subnet (e.g. 192.168.1.1/24 or
prof.fr.nessus.org), or a list of hosts, separated by commas
(e.g. 192.168.1.1, 192.168.2.1/24, prof.fr.nessus.org,
joyeux.fr.nessus.org).
· You can restrict the maximum number of hosts to test using the
“Max Hosts” entry. This is a feature that prevents you from
scanning too many machines; or accidentally scanning other
machines. (For instance, if you only plan to test prof.fr.nes‐
sus.org and www.fr.nessus.org, you can safely set this entry to
“2”).
· This panel also allows you to enable the “Perform a DNS zone
transfer” option. This option is dangerous and should be enabled
with caution. For instance, if you want to test www.nessus.org,
then if this option is set, nessusd will attempt to get the list
of the hosts in the “nessus.org” domain.
This option may be dangerous. For instance, if you enable it and
you ask to test 192.168.1.1/24, then nessusd will do a reverse
lookup on every IP, and will attempt a DNS zone transfer on
every domain. That is, if 192.168.1.1 is www.foo.bar, and
192.168.1.10 is mail.bar.foo, then a DNS zone transfer will be
made on the domains “foo.bar” and “bar.foo”.
· The “Plugins” section
Once you have successfully logged into the remote nessusd
server, this section is filed with the list of the attacks that
the server will perform. This panel is divided in two parts: the
plugins families, and the plugins themselves. If you click on
the name of a plugin, then a dialog will appear, showing you
which will be the error message sent by the plugin if the attack
is successful.
Report conversion
You can use nessus to do conversion between formats used for reports.
Nessus can take any NSR or NBE reports and change them into HTML, XML,
NSR or NBE reports.
Please note that the XML report provides usually more information about
the scan itself NSR or NBE formats do not include in the report.
Basically, XML is a merge between the .nbe reports and the .nessusrc
configuration file. You won't get extra verbosity or diagnosis info in
the XML report, but you'll know which plugins (and which version of
these plugins) have been enabled during the scan.
For more information on the report formats please read the files
nsr_file_format.txt and nbe_file_format.txt provided along with the
documentation.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
HOME The path to the user's home directory which will hold the client
configuration cache .nessusrc. The path is refered to as ~/,
below.
NESSUSHOME
If this environment variable is set, this path is used instead
of the path defined by the HOME variable. This path is referred
to as ~/, below.
% More examples should be included here (jfs)
EXAMPLES
To run a batch scan from a cron job and publish it in a given web space
( /var/www/html/nessus/ ) try the following:
nessus-c /root/nessus/nessus.rc -T html -qx localhost 1241 batch
batch1 /root/nessus/target /var/www/html/nessus/results.html
Make sure that paranoia level is not set in your nessus.rc configura‐
tion file, otherwise the scan will not work
FILES
~/.nessusrc
is the client configuration file, which contains the options
about which nessusd server to connect to, which plugins to acti‐
vate, and so on. The file is created automatically if it does
not exist.
SEE ALSOnessus-mkcert-client(1)MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NESSUS PROJECT
The canonical places where you will find more information about the
Nessus project are:
http://www.nessus.org/ ⟨⟩ (Official site)
http://cvs.nessus.org/ ⟨⟩ (Developers site)
AUTHORS
The Nessus Project was started and is being maintained by Renaud Derai‐
son <deraison@cvs.nessus.org>. The nessusd server is mainly Copyright
(C) 1998-2001 Renaud Deraison, as well as the attack modules.
Several other people have been kind enough to send patches and bug
reports. Thanks to them.
The Nessus Project February 2003 NESSUS(1)
