OpenVas is a open source vulnerability assesment system just like nessus, openVas used to find the vulnerabilities on a computer system, it is open source so you dont need to buy it, however you can get home feed of nessus for free too, but we consider both of them. If you want to know more about OpenVas than click here, and for nessus click here.

You can find nessu on backtrack 5 but you have to install openvas on backtrack5, so below is the tutorial for Openvas it includes how to install openvas in backtrack 5 and some basic usage.


Backtrack5 is not necessary to run openvas, if you are using some other version of backtrack or if you are using some other distro like Ubuntu than the procedure is same.

root@bt:~# apt-get install openvas

root@bt:~# sudo apt-get update

• It begins your openvas installation and update all the applications. When Openvas has been installed you can find it on Application –> Backtrack –> Vulnerability assessment –> vulnerability scanner –> Openvas . See the picture.

• On the next step click on openvas-check-setup, it will show you the problem and suggest some solution.
• Its time to add user, from the menu select Openvas adduser, enter the login name and password, for rule type ctrl-d.

• Now click on OpenVas NVT sync, by this you will get the latest NVT’s from openvas database, you must do this step frequently to make update your Openvas.
• Start openvas scanner from the menu, it may takes some time.
• Open terminal for setting up openvas manager, use the command 

root@bt:~# openvas-mkcert-client -n om -i

rebuild the database by the command 

root@bt:~# openvasmd –rebuild

• On the terminal type the command to set openvas administrator 

root@bt:~# openvasad -c ‘add_user’ -n openvasadmin -r Admin

• Now click on start Openvas manager from the menu and use the command.