Greenbone OpenVAS (Open Vulnerability Assessment System) is an open-source framework designed for vulnerability scanning. It is used to identify and manage security vulnerabilities in computer systems. Greenbone OpenVAS is a component of the Greenbone Vulnerability Management (GVM) solution, which offers additional features for enterprise vulnerability management.

This method is tested on Kali Linux (via netinstall) with and without graphical desktop. You should update your system before attempting this.

Step 1: Install Greenbone Community Edition:

  $ sudo apt install gvm -y

or:

  $ sudo apt install openvas -y

Step 2: After installing the needed package, we can run the configuration script:

  $ sudo gvm-setup

In the output, there will be displayed the admin credentials for your login to the webinterface.

Step 3: The installation includes a script to verify the installation has worked properly:

  $ sudo gvm-check-setup

Step 4: You can start & stop Greenbone OpenVAS with the following commands:

  $ sudo gvm-start

  $ sudo gvm-stop

Step 5: If you are using a desktop environment on the machine you installed OpenVAS on, you can now login to the webinterface at "https://127.0.0.1:9392". If you do not use a graphical desktop, you can enable the remote access in the following config file: "/usr/lib/systemd/system/gsad.service". Just replace "127.0.0.1" with "0.0.0.0". After that you can access the webinterface from another computer with "https://IP-Address:Port".

  ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/gsad --foreground --listen=0.0.0.0 --port=9392

You can also change the port of the webinterface here.

After editing the config file, you want to reload the config and restart the system service of gvm:

  $ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

  $ sudo systemctl restart gsad

Step 6: Before launching your first scan, you need to download current security information:

  $ sudo greenbone-feed-sync