just like antivirus programs. When you set up OpenVAS, one of the first things that
happens is that the current collection of vulnerability definitions will be downloaded.
If you have the system running regularly with the OpenVAS services, your vulnerabil‐
ities will get updated for you. If you have had OpenVAS down for a time and you
want to run a scan, it’s worth making sure that all of your signatures are updated. You
can do this on the command line by using the command
greenbone-nvt-sync
. Open‐
VAS uses the Security Content Automation Protocol to exchange information
between your installation and the remote servers where the content is stored.
OpenVAS uses a web interface, much like a lot of other applications today. To get
access to the web application, you go to
https://localhost:9392
. When you log in, you
are presented with a dashboard. This includes graphs related to your own tasks. The
dashboard also presents information about the vulnerabilities it knows about and
their severities. In
Figure 4-5
, you can see a web page open to the dashboard. You will
see the URL is a host on my local network because I’m accessing it remotely from my
laptop. If you were on the desktop of your Kali system, you would use the preceding
URL. The OpenVAS team calls their UI the
Greenbone Security Assistant
.
Figure 4-5. Greenbone Security Assistant
The menus for accessing features and functions are along the top of the page. From
there, you can access features related to the scans, assets, and configurations, as well
as the collection of security information that OpenVAS knows about, with all the vul‐
nerabilities it is aware of.
Quick Start with OpenVAS
While OpenVAS is certainly a dense piece of software, providing a lot of capabilities
for customization, it does provide a simple way to get started. A scan wizard allows
you to just provide a target and get started scanning. If you want to get a quick sense
of common vulnerabilities that may be found on the target, this is a great way to go. A
simple scan using the wizard will use the defaults, which is a way to get you started
