How to interact with Nessus.
Connecting to Nessus for External Tests
- Accessible over Zero Trust.
- Credentials and details are in LastPass.
Nessus Scan Configuration for ALL TESTS
- NEVER USE ANYTHING OTHER THAN the “Basic Network Scan” policy, with the following modifications:
- Discovery: “Port scan (all ports)”
- Assessment: “Scan for all webapp vulnerabilities (quick)”
Screenshots for Reports
Always include one screenshot showing the scan configuration (name of test policy, ports covered, whether webapp tests were included, start time), like this one:
Always include one screenshot of the summary view from the Nessus UI, sorted by vulnerability, so the reader can see the few highest-severity issues. This gives them some “so how bad did it look” context for reading the part of the report where you follow up on things. Example:
Disabling Dark Mode
To make horrible screenshots a bit less likely, set Nessus to use Light Mode:
Advanced Settings > User Interface > “UI Theme”, set this to “light”
Exporting Results for Easier Review
Include this file in the Supporting Data Archive any time you run Nessus on a test:
- Report > HTML
- Choose “Detailed Vulnerabilities By Plugin with Compliance/Remediations”
- Click “Generate Report” and save the HTML file
- Change the filename so it includes “nessus” and the date it ran and whatever else makes sense to you (e.g. replace the random characters with that)
Mixed Vulnerability Groups
By default, Nessus uses ‘mixed vulnerability groups’ which makes the “Vulnerabilities” display less helpful than it could be by lumping things of all different severities together into one “mixed” purple row. The BHIS installation has this fixed, but you’ll probably want to do it any time you have to install Nessus fresh.
“Mixed Vulnerability Groups” look like this (purple):
To fix this,
- go to Settings > Advanced and set these two settings to “No”
- Use Mixed Vulnerability Groups (this is the one that ignores severity)
- Use Vulnerability Groups (this one may be helpful sometimes)
With vulnerability groups:
Without vulnerability groups:
Manually Running Nessus Modules:
/opt/nessus/bin/nasl ./flexnet_publisher_detection.nbin -t 10.8.56.41 -a
/opt/nessus/bin/nasl ./flexnet_publisher_detection.nbin -t 10.8.56.41 -VV -a