Creating a Scan
If you want more control of your scan, more steps are required. There are a few
places to start, because there are several components you need to get in place before
you can start the scan. A simple place to start is the same place in the interface where
we were setting up local scans. You need to establish targets. If you want to run local
scans as part of your overall scan, you would set up your credentials as we did earlier,
going to the Configuration menu and selecting Credentials. Once you have set what‐
ever credentials you need, you can go to Configuration/Targets to access the dialog
box that allows you to specify targets.
From there, you add in or configure any credentials you may have and you have your
targets set up. You need to think about what kind of scan you want to do. This is
where you need to go to Scan Configs, also under the Configuration menu. This is
something else we looked at quickly under
“Local Vulnerabilities” on page 121
. Open‐
VAS does come with scan configs built in, and you can see the list in
Figure 4-9
.
These are canned configurations that you won’t be able to make changes to. Also in
this list, you will see a couple of configurations I created. If you want something dif‐
ferent from what the canned scans offer you, you need to either clone one of these
and edit it, or create your own.
Figure 4-9. List of scans
When you want to create your own scan configuration, you can start with a blank
configuration or a full and fast configuration. Once you have decided where you want
to start, you can begin selecting the scan families you want to include in your scan
configuration. Additionally, you can alter the way the scanner behaves. You can see a
set of configuration settings in
Figure 4-10
that will change the way the scan is run
and the locations it uses. One area to point out specifically here is the Safe Checks
setting. This indicates that the only checks to run are ones that are known to be safe,
