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Cyber Security Academy · Lesson

Running Nessus or OpenVAS Scans

Configure and run a vulnerability scanner; interpret results and reduce false positives.

Vulnerability Scanners Overview

Automated vulnerability scanners probe targets with thousands of checks and match results against CVE databases. They dramatically accelerate assessment but require tuning to reduce false positives.

Nessus Architecture

Nessus runs as a server with a web UI. Policies define what to scan; plugins (100,000+) contain the individual checks. Results are organized by host, severity, and plugin family.

# Start Nessus service
sudo systemctl start nessusd

# Access UI
https://localhost:8834

# Update plugins
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessuscli update --all

All lessons in this course

  1. CVE, CWE, and CVSS Scoring
  2. Running Nessus or OpenVAS Scans
  3. Web App Scanning with Nikto and OWASP ZAP
  4. Prioritizing and Remediating Findings
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