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Install OpenVAS on CentOS (2019)

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This article explains how to install OpenVAS on CentOS 7. My earlier attempts to document the installation process of OpenVAS on CentOS 6 failed. OpenVAS is an alternative to (and a fork of) the very popular Nessus. It’s a very capable vulnerability scanner. I hope to write other articles on the use of OpenVAS soon.

Sunday 21st April 2019: OpenVAS has recently gone through a significant change with “openvas-9.0.3-6767.el7.art.noarch is obsoleted by greenbone-vulnerability-manager-10.0.0-6947.el7.art.noarch”. This HowTo is likely not correct any longer. I will try to modify it to meet the new changes.

A few prerequisites:

  1. Disable SELinux.
  2. Permit TCP port 9392, 443 and 80.

Run this command. It’s downloading a script and executing it:

wget -q -O - https://updates.atomicorp.com/installers/atomic | sudo sh

Clear YUM:

yum clean all

Tune Redis by adding the following to your “/etc/rc.local”. Otherwise, just make sure this is executed before Redis starts. 

echo 512 > /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn
echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled

Install OpenVAS from YUM:

yum install openvas atomic-sqlite-sqlite sshpass

Run the setup process and follow the prompts. This takes a few hours due to all the downloads it needs:

openvas-setup

You can set a new Admin password at any time later for the web portal:

openvasmd --user=admin --new-password=MySecretPassword

Set the NVT signature checking in “/etc/openvas/openvassd.conf”. The following is set to ‘yes’ by default. Change it to no:

nasl_no_signature_check = no

Restart the services:

systemctl enable redis
systemctl enable gsad
systemctl enable gvmd 
systemctl enable openvas-manager 
systemctl enable openvas-scanner

systemctl restart redis
systemctl restart gsad
systemctl restart gvmd
systemctl restart openvas-manager
systemctl restart openvas-scanner

Open your web browser and navigate to the following address and login with the username and password you’ve previously set:

"https://localhost:9392" or "https://localhost"

Further random notes

The following are my notes and attempts to resolve minor issues.

Schedule updates

It’s important to keep OpenVAS up to date. Schedule the following command(s):

greenbone-nvt-sync ; openvasmd --rebuild

Trouble exporting reports in PDF format

For assistance with PDF reports can be found in this thread “lists.wald.intevation.org/pipermail/openvas-discuss/2014-October/006939.htmlOID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.25623.1.0.108013”. I was not successful in my en-devour to resolve this matter. I’d say it’s more to do with CentOS rather than OpenVAS.