Nessus Community Edition

[othman.bouayad 80]

Hi, 

I have noticed that the latest version of Nessus Community Edition doesn't allow the scan of public ip addresses. 

What other freely available vulnerability scanner do you recommend ?

(I have heard a lot of good things about OpenVAS, but i have not tested it yet)

Thanks, 

[Anuj Sharma 5]

Have you tried the NMap scripting engine? NMap has powerful scripts which can scan the target for vulnerabilities. They are located in the /usr/local/share/nmap/scripts/ directory if you are using backtrack 5. NMap scripts has also been covered in the Scanning module of Network Security as well.

 

OpenVAS has been forked out of Nessus, I haven't tried this as my employer has a professional version  , but do let us know your feedback if you give it a try.

 

There are various modules in Metasploit as well that can scan for vulnerabilites.

[othman.bouayad 80]

Hi, 

thanks anuj,  i did know about NSE scripts but usually theses scripts target a vulnerability or a very specific set of vulnerabilities;

I'll try OpenVas and try to give a feedback;

Best regards;

[othman.bouayad 80]

Hi i tried OpenVAS,

I found it quiet fast but not merely as comprehensive and intuitive to use as Nesssus.

Best regards

[guier.mike 6]

I would imagine if you learned nmaps scripting engine, that would provide all you need. other than that I havent tried out OpenVAS.

[robertray 41]

http://www.scip.ch/?labs.20130625 Vulnscan - nse scripts.

 

"Vulscan is a module which enhances nmap to a vulnerability scanner. The nmap option -sV enables version detection per service which is used to determine potential flaws according to the identified product. The data is looked up in an offline version of different vulnerability databases."

[othman.bouayad 80]

Hi,

Thank you for your answer, i'll try vulnscan.

Best regards,

[SnakeByte 7]

Not trying to encourage you to abuse Nessus policy, but in case you performing a external scan on your home public ip, Nessus community edition still lets you scan "public ips" you can simply ignore the warning.

 

If you want to perform a professional/business scan which is not allowed by Nessus terms, I find OpenVAS 6 (self install not the one built into Kali) very satisfying, specially the new Web admin panel.