Nessus On Linux

Nessus On Linux

In last tutorial we saw how to use nessus on Windows. But as told earlier nessus is multi-platform vulnerability scanning/assessment tool. In this section we will cover how we can use nessus on Linux platform. The installation process in Linux is not as straight forward as in Windows. So lets cover it first.

Since Nessus is supported by number of Linux distros we will list some most commonly used Linux distros to demonstrate installation process. Download nessus for your respective Linux Distro.

For Red Hat, Fedora, Suse Slackware:

#rvm -ivh <nessus_package_name>

For Debain, Gentoo, Ubuntu and its varients:

#dpkg -i <nessus_package_name>

Next step will be adding users since nessus runs as client-server even on Linux box, to add user type following command without any option.

# /opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-adduser

After typing above command it will ask you about details of user you want to add. Provide details and password. Next type the command as it is, sent for nessus registration by Tenable to your inbox. To start nessus server type,

# /etc/init.d/nessusd start

Once your nessus server starts connect to it via browser typing following command,

https://127.0.0.1:8834

If you are connecting nessus for first time your browser will surely give error as faulty SSL connection select “continue anyway” or “add to exception”. Whichever appears on your browser screen. Rest you can continue as you did in Windows