Software Update: Nessus 8.1.0

Nessus is a security scanner that can scan a network for known exploits and open services. Results can then be displayed in various reports to be displayed. The software can also integrated with other packages, such as CyberArk for credential management and MDM software from Microsoft, Apple, MobileIron and AirWatch. Nessus comes in three different flavors: the free-to-use Home edition, and the paid Professional and Manager editions. Tenable has released Nessus 8.1.0 with the following changes:

New Features

The following are the new features included in the Nessus 8.1.0 Release:

• Dynamic Scan Policies – Often you may need to scan your client’s environment for vulnerabilities with a specific type of behavior, for example, all vulnerabilities with a known exploit. In the past, with each plugin release, users would have to add each of these plugins to their policy manually. Now, using Dynamic Scan Policies, users can build a scan by creating a specific filter, eg, all exploitable, and incorporating the filter into the scan policy. By using these filters with your scan policies, new plugins that match the filter are automatically added to the policy.
• Revamped Advanced Settings Page – Improved the Advanced Settings UI to allow for a more straightforward view of these advanced controls.
• Remote Log Extraction – Troubleshooting scans and agents can be a significant challenge. With the release of 8.0, we simplified this by allowing users to collect local logs directly from the UI. With this release, we are laying the foundation to also be able to request remote logs from managed scanners and agents.
  Note: Scanners need to be running 8.1 above and agents need to be running 7.2 (not yet released).
• Internationalized Dates – Update the Nessus UI to use the international standard date notation, YYYY-MM-DD, where dates are shown.
• Update to SSL Ciphers – Use strong ciphers by default when negotiating SSL connections.
• Non-credentialed scan optimization – To decrease the time it takes to run scans, we have updated the logic for non-credentialed scans launched from Nessus to avoid running specific plugins that require credentials to work. Additionally, this significantly improves scan times for Host Discovery scans.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with vulnerability found on port 8834
• Corrected issue where unlinked Agents counted towards license usage in Nessus Manager
• Fixed issue that prevented hosts that included an underscore in their name from being scanned
• Fixed issue that could cause the SecurityCenter scan status bar to read greater than 100%
• Fixed issue that caused a crash when scanner metrics were shut down
• Fixed issue on FreeBSD with scanning targets not on the local subnet
• Fixed issue with honoring the ‘Scan IP addresses in a random order’ setting
• Fixed issue with detecting IP address aliases on a network interface