Finding vulnerabilities with OpenVAS

The Open Vulnerability Assessment Scanner (OpenVAS) is something that you would use to perform remote vulnerability scans. You can scan a single machine, a group of similar machines, or an entire network. It's not included in the repositories of the major Linux distros, so the best way to get it is to install one of the specialty security distros.

The big three security distros are Kali Linux, Parrot Linux, and Black Arch. They're aimed at security researchers and penetration testers, but they contain tools that would also be good for just a normal security administrator of either the Linux or Windows variety. OpenVAS is one such tool. All three of these three security distros have their unique advantages and disadvantages, but as Kali is the most popular, we'll go with it for the demos.

Note

You can download Kali Linux from https://www.kali.org/downloads/.

When you go to the Kali download page, you'll see lots of choices. If you're like me and don't like...