The OpenVAS network vulnerability scanner

Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is an open-source vulnerability assessment scanner and also a vulnerability management tool often utilized by attackers to scan a wide range of networks, which includes 80,000+ vulnerabilities in its database. However, this is considered a slow network vulnerability scanner compared with other commercial tools, such as Nessus, Nexpose, and Qualys.

This tool is not preinstalled within Kali Linux 2021.4, hence it needs to be installed manually. Ensure your Kali is up to date and install the latest version of OpenVAS by running the sudo apt install gvm command. Once this is done, run the sudo gvm-setup command to set up OpenVAS. This setup will run all the relevant vulnerability databases (SCAP/NVT/CERT) and, once the script has successfully executed, it should create an admin user and generate a random password, as shown in Figure 4.17:

Figure 4.17: Confirmation of admin user...