NESSUS
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NESSUS is a very powerful open-source tool designed to identify the presence of known security holes. * Official site: http://nessus.
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1.0 Introduction
Nessus is a great tool designed to automate the testing and discovery of known security problems. Typically someone, a hacker group, a security company, or a researcher discovers a specific way to violate the security of a software product. The discovery may be accidental or through directed research; the vulnerability, in various levels of detail, is then released to the security community. Nessus is designed to help identify and solve these known problems, before a hacker takes advantage of them. Nessus is a great tool with lots of capabilities. However it is fairly complex and few articles exist to direct the new user through the intricacies of how to install and use it. Thus, this article shall endeavor to cover the basics of Nessus setup and configuration. The features of the current versions of Nessus (Nessus 2.0.8a and NessusWX 1.4.4) will be discussed. Future articles will cover Nessus in more depth.
Nessus is a free program released under the GPL. Historically, many in the corporate world have ridiculed such public domain software as being a waste of time, instead choosing "supported" products developed by established companies. Typically these packages cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, and are often purchased using the logic that you get what you pay for. Some people are starting to realize that public domain software, such as Nessus, isn't always inferior and sometimes it is actually superior. Paid technical support for Nessus is even available from tenablesecurity.com. Nessus also has a great community of developers anchored by the primary author, Renaud Deraison. When allowed to fairly compete in reviews against other vulnerability scanners, Nessus has equaled or outshined products costing thousands of dollars. [ref: Information Security, Network Computing]
One of the very powerful features of Nessus is its client server technology. Servers can be placed at various strategic points on a network allowing tests to be conducted from various points of view. A central client or multiple distributed clients can control all the servers. The server portion will run on most any flavor of Unix. It even runs on MAC OS X and IBM/AIX, but Linux tends to make the installation simpler. These features provide a great deal of flexibility for the penetration tester. Clients are available for both Windows and Unix. The Nessus server performs the actual testing while the client provides configuration and reporting functionality.
2.0 Installation
Nessus server installation is fairly simple even for a Windows jockey like me. First an installed version of Unix is required. Secondly, prior installation of several external programs is recommended: NMAP is the industry standard for port scanners, Hydra is a weak password tester and Nikto is a cgi/.script checker. While not required, these external programs greatly enhance Nessus' scanning ability. They are included because they are the best applications in their class. If installed in the PATH$ before Nessus installation, they will automatically be available.
The simplest installation method is using the Lynx automatic install. Lynx is included on many of the linux versions. The Lynx command is (logged in as a user, and not root) :
lynx -source http://install.nessus.org | sh
This should install the server on most platforms with no other steps necessary. Note that the latest install script can also be downloaded and run locally. Whether you install directly off the Website or using the same install script offline, either way the script will setup a temporary suid and ask for your root password when required -- if you don't like this feature you can download, compile and install the four required tarballs individually. The above command should also be used periodically to upgrade Nessus as new versions are regularly released. You will be questioned about proxy servers, a download method (www or CVS), and the branch of the development tree to use; most of the time the defaults are the best choice. This is the simplest method of installation however; you are effectively giving the install.nessus.org server temporary root privileges. Thus there is a security risk with this method albeit a low one. So if you are paranoid, and paranoid is not always a bad thing in the security field, installation can be done the old-fashioned way by downloading and compiling the source. For information on performing an install from scratch see: nessusnessus_2_0.html.
3.0 Setup
Once the server is installed, some basic setup steps are required. The first task to complete in the new install is to add a user. A new user can be added by the "nessus-adduser" command. The script will question you for the authentication method. Authentication can be performed by several means, however a password is the simplest and is recommended. The next question queries about rules to restrict the user account. When used across an enterprise, a user can be restricted and only allowed to scan specified IP addresses. However, for most uses this will be left blank, allowing the user to scan anything. A certificate also needs to be generated as well to be used to encrypt the traffic between the client and server. The nessus-mkcert command accomplishes this.
3.1 Update plug-ins
Before a scan is done, the plug-ins should be updated. Nessus plug-ins are very much like virus signatures in a common virus scanner application. Each plug-in is written to test for a specific vulnerability. These can be written to actually exploit the vulnerability or just test for known vulnerable software versions. Plug-ins can be written in most any language but usually are written in the Nessus Attack Scripting Language (NASL). NASL is Nessus' own language, specifically designed for vulnerability test writing. Each plug-in is written to test for a specific known vulnerability and/or industry best practices. NASL plug-ins typically test by sending very specific code to the target and comparing the results against stored vulnerable values. There are a few built-in plug-ins that do not use NASL. These are C and Perl scripts to perform special purposes that can not easily be done in NASL. Among these is the Services plug-in which identifies port-to-program mappings.
Plug-in updates should be done frequently. New vulnerabilities are being discovered and disseminated all the time. Typically after a new vulnerability is released to the public, someone in the Nessus community writes a NASL plug-in, releases it to the public and submits it to nessus.org. It is then reviewed by the developers and added to the approved plug-in list. For high risk, high profile vulnerabilities a plug-in is often released the same day the vulnerability information is publicly released. Updating plug-ins from the maintained list is fairly simple involving a simple command: nessus-update-plugins. This command must be done as root. By no means however, are you limited to the list of plug-ins from nessus.org. New and special purpose plug-ins can be written relatively easily using NASL, so you can write your own custom plug-ins as well.
3.2 Launch the daemon
Nessus is now installed, updated and ready to go. The simplest way to get the server running is (as root) issue the nessusd -D command. In order to use it, one must use a client. There are three primary Nessus clients. The native Unix GUI version is installed at server install time. Alternatively, Nessus can be controlled from the command line. A third option, a Windows version also exists called NessusWX. The binaries for NessusWX can be found here . The NessusWX install is a straightforward Windows install. All three clients work well. Personally I prefer NessusWX. It is better organized, allows for easier reporting, and has a better facility for managing different sessions (groups of hosts to scan) then its Unix counterparts. To run the native Unix GUI client, run the nessus command or for NessusWX click the eye icon after installation.
3.3 Client connection
Since Nessus is a client server technology, once running the client a connection must be made to the server. In the native client, enter the server IP, username and password (created with the nessus-adduser command) and hit login. The process in NessusWX is similar but uses the communications | connect menus. The client is connected to the server thru an SSL connection and a list of the currently installed plug-ins is downloaded. On the first run the SSL certificate is also downloaded and verification is requested. This verification ensures that in the future you are actually communicating with the server intended. Figures 1 and 2 shows the connection using the Unix and Windows GUI tools, respectively. Figure 3 shows user authentication using the NessusWX client.

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