Nessus (software)

Nessus is a proprietary vulnerability scanner developed by Tenable, Inc.

Nessus Vulnerability Scanner

Developer(s)	Tenable, Inc.
Stable release	8.15.8 / January 18, 2023 (2023-01-18)[1]
Operating system	Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows
Type	Vulnerability scanner
License	Proprietary; GPL (2.2.11 and earlier)
Website	https://www.tenable.com

History

In 1998 Renaud Deraison created The Nessus Project as a free remote security scanner.^[2] On October 5 2005, with the release of Nessus 3, the project changed from the GNU General Public License to a proprietary license.^[3]

The Nessus 2 engine and some of the plugins are still using the GNU General Public License, leading to forks based on Nessus like OpenVAS^[2][4] and Greenbone Sustainable Resilience.^[5]

See also

• Metasploit Project
• OpenVAS
• Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN)
• SAINT (software)
• Snort (software)
• Wireshark