The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS)

About OpenVAS Software

• Architecture Overview
  
• Feature Overview
  
• Standards and Interoperability
  

Architecture Overview

The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools. The core of this SSL-secured service-oriented architecture is the OpenVAS Scanner. The scanner very efficiently executes the actual Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) which are served with daily updates via the OpenVAS NVT Feed or via a commercial feed service.

The OpenVAS Manager is the central service that consolidates plain vulnerability scanning into a full vulnerability management solution. The Manager controls the Scanner via OTP (OpenVAS Transfer Protocol) and itself offers the XML-based, stateless OpenVAS Management Protocol (OMP). All intelligence is implemented in the Manager so that it is possible to implement various lean clients that will behave consistently e.g. with regard to filtering or sorting scan results. The Manager also controls a SQL database (sqlite-based) where all configuration and scan result data is centrally stored.

A couple of different OMP clients are available: The Greenbone Security Assistant (GSA) is a lean web service offering a user interface for web browsers. GSA uses XSL transformation stylesheet that converts OMP responses into HTML.

The Greenbone Security Desktop (GSD) is a Qt-based desktop client for OMP. It runs on various Linux, Windows and other operating systems.

OpenVAS CLI contains the command line tool "omp" which allows to create batch processes to drive OpenVAS Manager.

The OpenVAS Administrator acts as a command line tool or as a full service daemon offering the OpenVAS Administration Protocol (OAP). The most important tasks are the user management and feed management. GSA support OAP and users with the role "Admin" can access the OAP functionality.

Most of the tools listed above share functionality that is aggregated in the OpenVAS Libraries.

The OpenVAS Scanner offers the communication protocol OTP (OpenVAS Transfer Protocol) which allows to control the scan execution. This protocol is subject to be eventually replaced and thus it is not recommended to develop OTP clients. Traditionally, the desktop- and cli-tool OpenVAS Client acts as a direct OTP client.

Feature overview

• OpenVAS Scanner
• Many target hosts are scanned concurrently
• OpenVAS Transfer Protocol (OTP)
• SSL support for OTP (always)
• WMI support (optional)
• ...
• OpenVAS Manager
• OpenVAS Management Protocol (OMP)
• SQL Database (sqlite) for configurations and scan results
• SSL support for OMP (always)
• Many concurrent scans tasks (many OpenVAS Scanners)
• Notes management for scan results
• False Positive management for scan results
• Scheduled scans
• Flexible escalators upon status of a scan task
• Stop, Pause and Resume of scan tasks
• Master-Slave Mode to control many instances from a central one
• Reports Format Plugin Framework with various plugins for: XML, HTML, LateX, etc.
• ...
• OpenVAS Administrator
• OpenVAS Administration Protocol (OAP)
• SSL support for OAP (always)
• All OAP commands also as command line parameters
• User Management
• Feed status view
• Feed synchronisation
• ...
• Greenbone Security Assistant (GSA)
• Client for OMP and OAP
• HTTP and HTTPS
• Web server on its own (microhttpd), thus no extra web server required
• Integrated online-help system
• ...
• Greenbone Security Desktop (GSD)
• Client for OMP
• Qt-based
• Runs on Windows, Linux, etc.
• Support of Internationalization (English, German, French...)
• ...
• OpenVAS CLI
• Client for OMP
• Runs on Windows, Linux, etc.
• ...

Standards and Interoperability

OpenVAS is a official OVAL Adopter and OpenVAS-5 registered as "Systems Characteristics Producer". See here for the official entry at MITRE: OVAL Adoption Participant OpenVAS See also: OVAL Adoption Program Examples for usage are available here: Greenbone Learning Center on OVAL-SC