Nessus 4 Installation Guide October 2, 2009 (Revision 8) The newest version of this document is … the newest plugins – You can start nessusd by typing /etc/rc.d/nessusd start # Debian 5 … Tenable Network Security, Inc. 4 Introduction This document describes the installation and configuration of Tenable Network Security?s Nessus 4 vulnerablity scanner. Please share your comments and suggestions with us by emailing them to support@tenablesecurity.com . Tenable Network Security, Inc. is the author and manager of …

6 Plugin Cooperation – The security tests performed by Nessus plugins cooperate so that unnecessary checks are not performed. If your FTP server does not offer anonymous logins, then anonymous-related security checks will not be performed. Complete Reports – Nessus will not only tell you what security vulnerabilities exist on your network and the risk level of each (Low, Medium, High and Critical), but it will also tell you how to mitigate them by offering solutions. Full SSL Support – Nessus has the ability to test services offered over SSL such as HTTPS, SMTPS, IMAPS and more. Smart Plugins (optional) – Nessus will determine which plugins should or should not be launched against the remote host. For example, Nessus will not test sendmail vulnerabilities against Postfix. This option is called “optimizations”. Non-Destructive (optional) – Certain checks can be detrimental to specific network services. If you do not want to risk causing a service failure on your network, enable the “safe checks” option of Nessus, which will make Nessus rely on banners rather than exploiting real flaws to determine if a vulnerability is present. Open Forum – Found a bug? Questions about Nessus? Start a discussion at https://discussions.nessus.org/ . Prerequisites Tenable recommends a minimum of 1 GB of memory to operate Nessus. To conduct larger scans of multiple networks, at least 2 GB of memory is recommended, but it may require up to 4 GB. A Pentium 3 processor running at 2 GHz or higher is recommended. Copyright 2004-2009, Tenable Network Security, Inc. 9 # service nessusd start Sample Output # service nessusd stop Shutting down Nessus services: [ OK ] # rpm -Uvh Nessus-4.0.0-es4.i386.rpm Preparing… ########################################### [100%] Shutting down Nessus services: 1:Nessus ########################################### [100%] nessusd (Nessus) 4.0.0 for Linux (C) 1998 – 2009 Tenable Network Security, Inc. Processing the Nessus plugins… [##################################################] All plugins loaded – Please run /opt/nessus

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