How to Install Nessus Essentials
Vulnerability scanning is one of the most important jobs of a cybersecurity analyst. As new information about vulnerabilities becomes available, it is important for security analysts to scan their network for these vulnerabilities and ensure that their network is protected. Nessus is one of the most popular tools for network vulnerability scanning, and in this blog post I will be discussing how to download Nessus and use it to scan your local network for vulnerabilities.
What is Nessus?
Nessus is a vulnerability scanner which provides host discovery, vulnerability scanning, and reports. There is an enterprise version of the software, as well as a free Essentials version. In order to download the software you can go to Tenable’s website. You will have to click the “get an activation code” on the top of the page and register an account in order to use the software.
Install
I installed Nessus on a Kali VM in VirtualBox. To do this I spun up an instance of Kali on my local machine, downloaded the Debain 6, 64-bit Nessus software.
Then ran this command to install:
sudo dpkg -i Nessus-8.5.2-debian6_amd64.deb
Once the package has installed, you will run this command to start the service:
sudo /bin/systemctl start nessusd.service
When you have run this command, navigate to the port which will have your Nessus dashboard (this should be https://localhost:8834/).
Once you have navigated here in your web-browser, you will be prompted to enter the registration code you should have received in an email after registering.
Once you have finished registering with an username and password, you are ready to start scanning.
How to Setup Your First Scan
Once you have accessed the Nessus dashboard, you will want to prepare your first scan. Your dashboard should look something like this:
We’ll start a new scan by clicking on the “New Scan” button in the top right corner. You should see a screen like this showing all of the scan options:
We will select “Basic Network Scan” for this tutorial, but scans should typically begin with host discovery, and then move on to further network enumeration. You will fill in the information on the new scan screen, and then save your scan:
Once you have specified what you would like to scan and saved your new scan, go back to the “My Scans” screen and find the new scan you just created. Click on that scan, and then press “Launch” in the upper right-hand corner, and Nessus will begin scanning the specified network.
Once the scan has completed Nessus will give you results and you can begin vulnerability remediation.
Conclusion
Nessus is a great tool for automatically scanning networks for most recent security vulnerabilities. Nessus Essentials makes is very easy for normal people with a cursory knowledge of cybersecurity to begin securing themselves and their network from attackers.
With threats increasing and more of our time being spent online, it is important to utilize tools like this to secure networks from attackers.
