NESSUS(1)

NAME
nessus - The client part of the Nessus Security Scanner

SYNOPSIS
nessus [ -v ] [ -h ] [ -n ] [ -q host port user password targets results ]

DESCRIPTION
The Nessus Security Scanner is a security auditing tool made up of two parts : a server, and a client. The server, nessusd(8) 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

-v  shows version number and quits

-h  lists the available options

-n  no pixmaps. Handy if you are running nessus on a remote computer.

-q  quiet mode. host is the nessusd host to connect to. port is the port to connect to on this remote nessusd host. user is the user name to use to connect on nessusd password is the password associated to this user name targets is the name of a file containing the targets hosts. results is the name of the file where will be stored the results, at the end of * the test

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 connect to, as well as the port. You must also enter your nessusd user name and your password (not the one of the system). Once you are done, you must click on the 'login now!' button, which will establish the connection the 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 (like prof.fr.nessus.org), an IP (192.168.1.1), a subnet (192.168.1.1/24, or prof.fr.nessus.org), or a list of hosts, separated by commas (like : 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
     This is an 'extra security' which will garantee you that you will not test other by accident (for instance, if you only plan to test prof.fr.nessus.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.

FILES
nessus(1) creates two files :

•   is the client configuration file, which contains the options about which nessusd server to connect to, which plugins to activate, and so on...