Nessus

Upgrading To Nessus v3.0.5

The Nessus license does not permit v3.0.5 to be included in the NST distribution. The following provides the steps necessary to upgrade a NST system to Nessus v3.0.5.

Requirements

• Registration at the Nessus site.

• A hard disk installation of NST v1.5.0 (a virtual hard disk installation will work - but is not optimal).

Caveats

• The "html_graph" option is no longer available as an output method (performing Nessus scans using the NST WUI will still be possible, but a little awkward).

• The upgrade disables the X GUI Nessus client. You will need to download a separate Nessus client package if you need this feature.

Instructions

Register At the Nessus Site

In order to install Nessus v3.0.5, you will need to register at the Nessus web site. Once registered, you will be able to download the necessary RPM and you will receive a activation code via email which will be used to activate your installation.

Download RPM and Copy To NST

Unfortunately, you will need to download and copy the appropriate RPM for Nessus to the: "/tmp" directory on your NST system by hand (this is due to the fact that you need to register at the Nessus site). Here are the steps which you will need to follow:

• Go to the Nessus download area: "http://www.nessus.org/download/".

• From the pull down list, select "Nessus 3.0.5 for Linux" and press the "Download" button.

• Complete the registration process (use a working email address when you register as you will need the registration code later).

• Download the file: "Nessus-3.0.5-fc5.i386.rpm".

• Transfer the downloaded file to the: "/tmp" directory on your NST system.

After completing this step, you should see results similar to those shown below on your NST system:

After Downloading RPM

[root@probe ~]# ls -l /tmp/Nessus*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8053747 Jun 14 08:39 /tmp/Nessus-3.0.5-fc5.i386.rpm

[root@probe ~]#

Update Your NST WUI

We are going to be using a automated patch/update script to extract, install and update files from the Nessus RPM we downloaded onto the NST system. Before proceeding to the "" page, one should make sure that they have the most recent version of the NST WUI installed on the system.

• From the main NST WUI index page, locate the "Downloads & Updates" row in the "System" table and select the "NST WUI Updates" link.

• Select the radio button next to the: "v1.5.0" choice.

• Press the: "Download/Install NST WUI Management Interface" button.

• This will download the latest version of the NST WUI and restart the web server on your NST system.

• You may need to force your browser to reload the updated CSS and JavaScript files after the NST WUI update (on Firefox, hold down the Shift key while pressing the browser Reload button).

After the installation completes, you should be ready to proceed to updating your NST system.