OpenVAS(8)

NAME
openvas - The Scanner of the Greenbone Vulnerability Management

SYNOPSIS
openvas [-V] [-h] [-c config-file] [--scan-start scan-uuid] [-u] [-s] [-y]

DESCRIPTION
Greenbone Vulnerability Management (GVM) is a vulnerability auditing and management framework made up of several modules. The OpenVAS Scanner, openvas is in charge of executing many security tests against many target hosts in a highly optimized way.

openvas inspects the remote hosts to list all the vulnerabilities and common misconfigurations that affects them.

It is a command line tool with parameters to update the feed of vulnerability tests and to start a scan. The second part of the interface is the redis store where the parameters about a scan task need to be placed and from where the results can be retrieved.

OPTIONS

-c <config-file>, --config-file=<config-file>
    Use the alternate configuration file instead of /etc/openvas/openvas.conf

-V, --version
    Prints the version number and exits

-h, --help
    Show a summary of the commands

--scan-start=<scan-uuid>
    ID for a single scan task. The scanner will start the scan with the data already loaded in a redis KB, which will be found using the given scan-id.

--scan-stop=<scan-uuid>
    ID for a single scan task. The scanner will search the redis kb associated to the given scan_id. It takes the pid from the kb and sends the SIGUSR1 kill signal to stop the scan.

-u, --update-vt-info
    Updates VT info into redis store from VT files.

THE CONFIGURATION FILE

The default openvas configuration file, /etc/openvas/openvas.conf contains these options:

plugins_folder
    Contains the location of the plugins folder. This is usually /var/lib/openvas/plugins, but you may change this.

include_folders
    Contains the location of the include file folder. This is usually /var/lib/openvas/plugins, but you may change this.

max_hosts
    is maximum number of hosts to test at the same time which should be given to the client (which can override it). This value must be computed given your bandwidth, the number of hosts you want to test, your amount of memory and the horsepower of your processor(s).

max_checks
    is the number of plugins that will run against each host being tested. Note that the total number of process will be max_checks x max_hosts so you need to find a balance between these two options. Note that launching too many plugins at the same time may disable the remote host, either temporarily (ie: inetd closes its ports) or definitely (the remote host crash because it is asked to do too many things at the same time), so be careful.

log_whole_attack
    If this option is set to 'yes', openvas will store the name, pid, date and target of each plugin launched. This is helpful for monitoring and debugging purpose, however this option might make openvas fill your disk rather quickly.

db_address
    Path to the redis socket where the plugins cache and knowledge bases are stored.

report_scripts
    Stores in a file the script run duration in json format. This option expects a valid path to store a file with scripts stats. Script run durations are collected only if the log_whole_attack setting is set to 'yes'. This is helpful for monitoring and debugging purpose, however this option might make openvas fill your disk rather quickly.

debug_tls
    This is an scanner-only option which allows you to set the TLS log level. The level is an integer between 0 and 9. Higher values mean more verbosity and might make openvas fill your disk rather quickly. The default value is 0 (disabled).

    Larger values should only be used with care, since they may reveal sensitive information in the scanner logs.

    Use a debug level over 10 to enable all debugging options.

log_plugins_name_at_load
    If this option is set to 'yes', openvas will log the name of each plugin being loaded at startup, or each time it receives the HUP signal.

cgi_path
    By default, openvas looks for default CGIs in /cgi-bin and /scripts. You may change these to something else to reflect the policy of your site. The syntax of this option is the same as the shell $PATH variable: path1:path2:...

port_range
    This is the default range of ports that the scanner plugins will probe. The syntax of this option is flexible, it can be a single range ("1-1500"), several ports ("21,23,80"), several ranges of ports ("1-1500,32000-33000"). Note that you can specify UDP and TCP ports by prefixing each range by T or U. For instance, the following range will make openvas scan UDP ports 1 to 1024 and TCP ports 1 to 65535 : "T:1-65535,U:1-1024".

test_alive_hosts_only
    If this option is set to 'yes', openvas will scan the target list for alive hosts in a separate process while only testing those hosts which are identified as alive. This boosts the scan speed of target ranges with a high amount of dead hosts significantly.

alive_test_ports
    Preference to set the port list for the TCP SYN and TCP ACK alive test methods. This setting overwrites the default port list: "21-23,25,53,80,110-111,135,139,143,443,445,993,995,1723,3306,3389,5900,8080".

test_alive_wait_timeout
    This option is to set how long (in sec) Boreas (alive test) waits for replies after last packet was sent. Default: 3 seconds.

icmp_retries
    This is the default amount of icmp packets that will be sent to the host target during an alive test. Defaults to 1.

icmp_grace_period
    Wait time between icmp packets during alive tests. Useful for sensitive targets. It can slow down the alive test.

optimize_test
    By default, optimize_test is enabled which means openvas does trust the remote host banners and is only launching plugins against the services they have been designed to check. For example it will check a web server claiming to be IIS only for IIS related flaws but will skip plugins testing for Apache flaws, and so on. This default behavior is used to optimize the scanning performance and to avoid false positives. If you are not sure that the banners of the remote host have been tampered with, you can disable this option.

optimization_level
    Level of test optimization. It checks if plugins requirement are met. Level=1 checks only that required ports are open, level=2 checks open ports and keys requirements are met, else checks also if excluded keys are present or not. Default: no optimization, check everything.

test_empty_vhost
    If set to yes, the scanner will also test the target by using empty vhost value in addition to the target's associated vhost values.

checks_read_timeout
    Number of seconds that the security checks will wait for when doing a recv(). You should increase this value if you are running openvas across a slow network link (testing a host via a dialup connection for instance).

timeout_retry
    Number of retries when a socket connection attempt timesout.

open_sock_max_attempts
    When a port is found as opened at the beginning of the scan, and for some reason the status changes to filtered/closed, it will not be possible to open a socket. This is the number of unsuccessful retries to open the socket before to set the port as closed. This avoids to launch plugins which need the opened port as a mandatory key, therefore it avoids an overlong scan duration. If the set value is 0 or a negative value, this option is disabled. It should be take in account that one unsuccessful attempt needs the number of retries set in "timeout_retry".

time_between_request
    Some devices do not appreciate quick connection establishment and termination neither quick request. This option allows you to set a wait time between two actions like to open a tcp socket, to send a request through the open tcp socket, and to close the tcp socket. This value should be given in milliseconds. If the set value is 0 (default value), this option is disabled and there is no wait time between requests.

expand_vhosts
    Whether to expand the target host's list of vhosts with values gathered from sources such as reverse-lookup queries and VT checks for SSL/TLS certificates.

non_simult_ports
    Some services (in particular SMB) do not appreciate multiple connections at the same time coming from the same host. This option allows you to prevent openvas to make two connections on the same given ports at the same time. The syntax of this option is "port1[, port2....]". Note that you can use the KB notation of openvas to designate a service formally. Ex: "139, Services/www", will prevent openvas from making two connections at the same time on port 139 and on every port which hosts a web server.

allow_simultaneous_ips
    If set to no, this option prevent openvas to scan more than one different IPs (e.g. the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses) which belong to the same host at the same time. Default, yes.

plugins_timeout
    This is the maximum lifetime, in seconds of a plugin. It may happen that some plugins are slow because of the way they are written or the way the remote server behaves. This option allows you to make sure your scan is never caught in an endless loop because of a non-finishing plugin. Doesn't affect ACT_SCANNER plugins.

scanner_plugins_timeout
    Like plugins_timeout, but for ACT_SCANNER plugins.

max_vts_timeouts
    During a scan it might happen that a host unexpectedly shuts down, a firewall blocks the traffic, a network device issue break the connection, etc. This leads to many NVT timeouts and long scan durations. This option checks the alive status of the host again after the provided amount of max NVT timeouts are reached. If the host is considered dead the scan will be stopped for this host. Otherwise the scan will continue. This option requires Boreas alive test to be enabled. Default: option not set, disabled.

safe_checks
    Most of the time, openvas attempts to reproduce an exceptional condition to determine if the remote services are vulnerable to certain flaws. This includes the reproduction of buffer overflows or format strings, which may make the remote server crash. If you set this option to 'yes', openvas will disable the plugins which have the potential to crash the remote services, and will at the same time make several checks rely on the banner of the service tested instead of its behavior towards a certain input. This reduces false positives and makes openvas nicer towards your network, however this may make you miss important vulnerabilities (as a vulnerability affecting a given service may also affect another one).

auto_enable_dependencies
    OpenVAS plugins use the result of each other to execute their job. For instance, a plugin which logs into the remote SMB registry will need the results of the plugin which finds the SMB name of the remote host and the results of the plugin which attempts to log into the remote host. If you want to only select a subset of the plugins available, tracking the dependencies can quickly become tiresome. If you set this option to 'yes', openvas will automatically enable the plugins that are depended on.

hosts_allow
    Comma-separated list of the only targets that are authorized to be scanned. Supports the same syntax as the list targets. Both target hostnames and the address to which they resolve are checked. Hostnames in hosts_allow list are not resolved however.

hosts_deny
    Comma-separated list of targets that are not authorized to be scanned. Supports the same syntax as the list targets. Both target hostnames and the address to which they resolve are checked. Hostnames in hosts_deny list are not resolved however.

sys_hosts_allow
    Like hosts_allow. Can't be overridden by the client.

sys_hosts_deny
    Like hosts_deny. Can't be overridden by the client.

max_sysload
    Maximum load on the system. Once this load is reached, no further VTs are started until the load drops below this value again.

min_free_mem
    Minimum available memory (in MB) which should be kept free on the system. Once this limit is reached, no further VTs are started until sufficient memory is available again.

max_mem_kb
    Maximum amount of memory (in MB) allowed to use for a single script. If this value is set, the amount of memory put into redis is tracked for every Script. If the amount of memory exceeds this limit, the script is not able to set more kb items. The tracked the value written into redis is only estimated, as it does not check, if a value was replaced or appended. The size of the key is also not tracked. If this value is not set or <= 0, the maximum amount is unlimited (Default).

unscanned_closed
    This defines whether TCP ports that were not scanned should be treated like closed ports. Defaults to "yes".

unscanned_closed_udp
    This defines whether UDP ports that were not scanned should be treated as closed ports. Defaults to "yes".

table_driven_lsc
    This option will enable table driven local security Checks (LSC). This means gathered packages are sent to a specialized scanner. This is far more efficient than doing checks via NASL. Defaults to true.

mqtt_server_uri
    URI to the MQTT server used for internal communication with Notus (table driven LSC). This implementation of Notus is in python and it is deprecated, beeing replaced with a Rust implementation of Notus.

mqtt_user
    Username for authenticated MQTT communication.

mqtt_pass
    Password for authenticated MQTT communication.

openvasd_server
    Openvasd server URI to Rust implementation of Notus. It has priority over MQTT settings.

x-apikey
    API Key for authenticate against openvasd when Notus Rust implementation is enabled.

nasl_no_signature_check
    Enable/disable the Feed signacture check. Pay attention to the negative logic of this setting.

    The other options in this file can usually be redefined by the client.

NETWORK USAGE

Bear in mind that OpenVAS can be quite network intensive. Even if the OpenVAS developers have taken every effort to avoid packet loss (including transparently resending UDP packets, waiting for data to be received in TCP connections, etc.) so bandwidth use should always be closely monitored, with current server hardware, bandwidth is usually the bottleneck in a OpenVAS scan. It might not became too apparent in the final reports, scanners will still run, holes might be detected, but you will risk to run into false negatives (i.e. OpenVAS will not report a security hole that is present in a remote host)

Users might need to tune OpenVAS configuration if running the scanner in low bandwidth conditions (low being 'less bandwidth that the one your hardware system can produce) or otherwise will get erratic results. There are several parameters that can be modified to reduce network load:

checks_read_timeout
    The default value is set to 5 seconds, that can (should) be increased if network bandwidth is low in the openvas.conf or openvasrc configuration files. Notice that it is recommended to increase this this value, if you are running a test outside your LAN (i.e. to Internet hosts through an Internet connection), to over 10 seconds.

max_hosts
    Number of hosts to test at the same time. It can be as low as you want it to be (obviously 1 is the minimum)

max_checks
    Number of checks to test at the same time it can be as low as you want it to be and it will also reduce network load and improve performance (obviously 1 is the minimum) Notice that OpenVAS will spawn max_hosts * max_checks processes.

drop_privileges
    If this preference is set to 'yes', OpenVAS will attempt to drop its root privilege before launching any VT and the new process owner is 'nobody'; the default value of this preference is 'no', meaning no change in behaviour.

nasl_drop_privileges_user
    If a user is set, NASL functions can use this user to drop its root privilege. The new process owner is set only for those process calling a nasl function which supports a drop privileges action. This preference must not be mixed with 'drop_privileges'. If 'drop_privileges' is enabled, this option should not be used, as 'drop_privileges' sets the owner to

vendor_version
    Use the alternate vendor instead of the default one during scans.

    Other options might be using the QoS features offered by your server operating system or your network to improve the bandwidth use.

    It is not easy to give a bandwidth estimate for a OpenVAS run, you will probably need to make your own counts. However, assuming you test 65536 TCP ports. This will require at least a single packet per port that is at least 40 bytes large. Add 14 bytes for the ethernet header and you will send 65536 * (40 + 14) = 3670016 bytes. So for just probing all TCP ports we may need a multitude of this as nmap will try to resend the packets twice if no response is received.

    A very rough estimate is that a full scan for UDP, TCP and RPC as well as all NASL scripts may result in 8 to 32 MB worth of traffic per scanned host. Reducing the amount of tested part and such will reduce the amount of data to be transferred significantly.

SEE ALSO
gvmd(8), gsad(8), ospd-openvas(8), openvas-nasl(1), openvas-nasl-lint(1),

MORE INFORMATION

The canonical places where you will find more information about OpenVAS are:

    Community Portal (https://community.greenbone.net)
    Development Platform (https://github.com/greenbone)
    Traditional home site (https://www.openvas.org)

AUTHORS

openvas was forked from nessusd in 2005. Nessusd was written by Renaud Deraison <deraison@cvs.nessus.org>. Most new code since 2005 developed by Greenbone AG.