nesspy

Automated Nessus vulnerability scanning

Overview

Since Nessus 6, automation of the Nessus scanner is very limited. This project uses the limited capabilities of the shipped API to build an automated workflow for vulnerability management.

The API is abstracted into Python objects, all http requests are handled in the background.

Usage

Set up a connection to the nessus backend by providing your login credentials in the config.json file:

    from nesspy import ConnectionManager
    with open('config.json', 'r') as infile:
        config = json.load(infile)
    nessus = ConnectionManager(**config)

List all scans saved in the backend

    scans = nessus.list_scans()
    print(scans)

	id	name	creation_date	status
0	8	My Basic Network Scan	1595850410	completed
1	11	Discovery	1595589928	completed

Export a .nessus/xml file

    xml_string = nessus.export_scan(8)
    print(xml_string)

<?xml version="1.0" ?>\n<NessusClientData_v2>\n<Policy><policyName>Basic Network Scan</policyName>\n<Preferences><ServerPreferences><preference><name>scan.enable_utf8_output</name>\n<value>no</value>\n</pr

Export a .csv file

    from nessus_parser import parser
    cvs = parser(xml)
    print(csv)

Setup

1. Install & run the Nessus Scanner on your local machine.
2. Start/schedule a vulnerability scan on the webinterface (default: https://localhost:8834)
3. Run the export automation script
4. Run the parser scripts to generate a sanitized .csv file
5. Import the .csv into your favorite monitoring platform (tested with Splunk)

Status

Under active development, limited functionality.

Dependencies

• Nessus (tested with 8.11.0)
• Python 3.x
• packages from requirements.txt

Contributions

This package builds on previous work:

Autonessus is a python2 cli-interface to nessus https://github.com/redteamsecurity/AutoNessus