Narrator: OpenVAS and Qualys. 2 2
In the last lesson, we talked about Nessus, 3 3
which is a commercially available scanner. 4 4
In this lesson, 5 5
I wanted to talk about two more, OpenVAS and Qualys. 6 6
Now Nessus began its life as an open source software project 7 7
which means it was available for anybody to download 8 8
and modify its source code, 9 9
and the whole community worked 10 10
at building that product together. 11 11
At a certain point though, 12 12
Nessus decided they wanted to switch 13 13
and they became a commercially viable product. 14 14
And so they started charging money 15 15
for commercial users to use it, 16 16
and they gave it away for home users. 17 17
Now, when that happened, another product took up, 18 18
and this is known as OpenVAS. 19 19
OpenVAS is an open source vulnerability scanner 20 20
that began its development when Nessus' code base was split. 21 21
And they split, Nessus went into the commercial realm 22 22
and OpenVAS went into the open source realm. 23 23
And from that point forward, 24 24
OpenVAS has stayed as an open source product. 25 25
Now, OpenVAS looks a lot like an old school Nessus. 26 26
If you look at some of the older versions of Nessus, 27 27
they actually looked almost identical. 28 28
Over time, Nessus has upgraded their user interface 29 29
so it looks different, 30 30
but they still do basically the same functions. 31 31
So if I look here on the screen, 32 32
you could see an example of what OpenVAS looks like. 33 33
You can see that we get a nice report 34 34
with some donut rings and some bar graphs 35 35
of all the different vulnerabilities we found, 36 36
and then we can dig into those 37 37
and get the information on each of the hosts. 38 38
Now, the other product I want to talk about 39 39
here real quick is Qualys. 40 40
Now, Qualys is a cloud-based 41 41
vulnerability management solution 42 42
with installed sensor agents 43 43
at various points in your network. 44 44
And then those sensors upload data to the cloud platform 45 45
and you go to this cloud platform's website 46 46
to do your analysis. 47 47
When you do that, it looks something like this. 48 48
Again, it's another UI similar to what you saw with Nessus. 49 49
We have some bar graphs and some charts 50 50
so we can see what's vulnerable. 51 51
We can see what the top vulnerabilities are, 52 52
and the top tickets we're working, 53 53
and we can see the most vulnerable hosts 54 54
so we know which ones we should look at first. 55 55
This is the idea of using one of these dashboards 56 56
to really help you identify what you need to do. 57 57
Now, again, this was a very short lesson 58 58
and it was just to introduce you to the idea 59 59
that there are other vulnerability scanners out there. 60 60
For the exam, you don't need to know 61 61
a specific vulnerability scanner in depth. 62 62
You don't need to be able to use Nessus or OpenVAS 63 63
or Qualys, or any of the other scanners out there. 64 64
But you should be comfortable reading the common outputs 65 65
from each of them in your findings. 66 66
Now, for the exam, 67 67
you're not going to get a specific assessment tools output, 68 68
but instead you're going to get something 69 69
that looks more whitewashed into a common denominator 70 70
of what a vulnerability scanner's output might look like. 71 71
Now, what do I mean by that? 72 72
Well, if you've already taken the A Plus exam 73 73
back in the day, you may have gotten a question that said, 74 74
"Go set up email on a smartphone or on a tablet." 75 75
And if you did that, 76 76
they didn't give you an iOS email client 77 77
or an Android email client. 78 78
They gave you something that kind of looked like both, 79 79
but it kind of looked like neither. 80 80
It was just a generic email program. 81 81
Now, the same thing's going to apply here with CYSA. 82 82
They're not going to give you a Nessus output 83 83
or a Qualys output or an OpenVAS output, 84 84
but they're going to give you a lot of the same information 85 85
from that output in a different format. 86 86
So if you're comfortable 87 87
with using any of those three tools, 88 88
you're going to do fine on the exam 89 89
when you get the output they're going to give you 90 90
to be able to do your own analysis 91 91
and pick the right answer.