Vulnerability Management: Nessus Essentials

Description

In this project we will cover vulnerability scanning and vulnerability remediation. These are two of the main steps in the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle. We will be using Nessus Essentials to scan local VMs hosted on VMWare Workstation in order run credentialed scans to discover vulnerabilities, remediate some of the vulnerabilities, then perform a rescan to verify remediation.

Languages and Utilities Used

Nessus Essentials
Windows 10 ISO

Environments Used

VMware Workstation Player
Windows 10 (21H2)
Server 2019

Program walk-through:

Download VMware Player:

Download Windows 10 ISO:

Download Nessus Essentials:

Set up Windows 10 ISO and create an ISO file:

Set up the Windows 10 VM and browse to the ISO file we created:

When setting up the virtual machine, in the hardware settings under network adapters, choose bridged (this allows the VM and the actual PC be on the same network, making it easier for nessus essentials to scan:

Boot Window 10 VM and set up:

Get the IPv4 address on the VM and Ping it on your actual PC:

You will notice that the ping will time out, this is due to the firewalls on the VM:

Disable the firewalls in the WIndow Firewall Defender then ping again:

In Nessus Essentials, create a new network scan:

After the network scan is created, inspect the first scan with no credentials:

On the virtual Machine, open up servcies and enable Remote Registry which will allow the scanner to connect to this VMs registry to look for insecure configurations:

Enable File and Printer Sharing on the VM:

Go to User Account Control and change to never notify:

Go to Registry Editor and in the directory below (Found on Nessus) create a DWORD file with the following name and set the value data to 1. Restart the VM:

At this point of the project, we are ready to scan the VM. Go to Nessus Essentials now and add the following credentials. Hit save:

After letting it run for a bit, you can see the difference in vulnerbilities before and after adding credentials:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

After taking a deeper dive into the vulnerabilities, you can see how Nessus Essentials provides solutions for critical vulnerabilities like the one shown below:

Download a very old version of firefox just to run another scan with more vulnerabilities before we start remediating:

Launch the scan once again for a bit and come back to the vulnerablities and you should see something like this:

After reading the remediations, update and restart windows on the VM:

Now run the scan once more and observe how the vulnerabilities and remediations decrease:

This concludes the project on how to manage vulnerabilites using Nessus Essentials!