OpenVAS 8.0 Vulnerability Scanning
Published: 2023-08-21 21:17:54

---
title: OpenVAS 8.0 Vulnerability Scanning
published: true
date: 2015-04-27 00:00:00 UTC
tags: 
canonical_url: https://www.kali.org/blog/openvas-vulnerability-scanning/
---

 **Vulnerability scanning** is a crucial phase of a penetration test and having an updated vulnerability scanner in your security toolkit can often make a real difference by helping you discover overlooked vulnerable items. For this reason, we’ve manually packaged the latest and newly released [OpenVAS](https://www.openvas.org/) 8.0 tool and libraries for Kali Linux. Although nothing major has changed in this release in terms of running the vulnerability scanner, we wanted to give a quick overview on how to get it up and running.

## Setting up Kali for Vulnerability Scanning

If you haven’t already, make sure your Kali is up-to-date and install the latest OpenVAS. Once done, run the **openvas-setup** command to setup OpenVAS, download the latest rules, create an admin user, and start up the various services. Depending on your bandwidth and computer resources, this could take a while:

```
root@kali:~# apt-get update
root@kali:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
root@kali:~# apt-get install openvas
root@kali:~# openvas-setup
/var/lib/openvas/private/CA created
/var/lib/openvas/CA created
[i] This script synchronizes an NVT collection with the 'OpenVAS NVT Feed'.
[i] Online information about this feed: 'https://www.openvas.org/openvas-nvt-feed
...
sent 1143 bytes received 681741238 bytes 1736923.26 bytes/sec
total size is 681654050 speedup is 1.00
[i] Initializing scap database
[i] Updating CPEs
[i] Updating /var/lib/openvas/scap-data/nvdcve-2.0-2002.xml
[i] Updating /var/lib/openvas/scap-data/nvdcve-2.0-2003.xml
...
Write out database with 1 new entries
Data Base Updated
Restarting Greenbone Security Assistant: gsad.
User created with password '6062d074-0a4c-4de1-a26a-5f9f055b7c88'.

```

Once **openvas-setup** completes its process, the OpenVAS manager, scanner, and GSAD services should be listening:

```
root@kali:~# netstat -antp
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:9390 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 9583/openvasmd
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:9391 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 9570/openvassd: Wai
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:9392 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 9596/gsad

```

### Starting the OpenVAS services

If you have already configured OpenVAS, you can simply start all the necessary services by running **openvas-start** :

```
root@kali:~# openvas-start
Starting OpenVas Services
Starting Greenbone Security Assistant: gsad.
Starting OpenVAS Scanner: openvassd.
Starting OpenVAS Manager: openvasmd.

```

_If you need to troubleshoot any issues, you can use **openvas-check-setup** to identity the problem._

### Connecting to the OpenVAS Web Interface

Point your browser to **https://127.0.0.1:9392** , accept the self signed SSL certificate and plugin the credentials for the **admin** user. The admin password was generated during the setup phase (look at the output above if you missed it).

[![](https://www.kali.org/blog/openvas-vulnerability-scanning/images/openvas_web_small.png)](https://www.kali.org/blog/openvas-vulnerability-scanning/images/openvas_web_small.png)

That’s it! Now OpenVAS is ready for you to configure it and run a scan against a given IP or range. Happy vulnerability scanning!