Introduction

Nessus was a centaur in Sophocles' ancient manuscript, "The Death of Heracles." This beastly creature dupes the wife of Heracles into giving her husband a garment that has been poisoned, thus bringing an end to the mighty Heracles. One could speculate for quite a while on how this ancient and mythological tale might have inspired the name of the most widespread open source vulnerability scanner in use today. However, speculation is all that it would be, as according to Renaud Deraison, he has "no special reason" for dubbing his project Nessus.

Renaud does, however, have a special reason to be proud. The Nessus Project is one of the many successful security-centric open source projects today. It finds its place as a tool of the unfunded security researcher, and of the highly funded security consultant. Nessus enjoys accolades from many years of competitive product reviews and was recently picked as one of PC Magazine's "best products of 2003." Moreover, the Nessus project is now defined by an active community of about 1500 outspoken participants and many more yet to be heard from.

What Is It?

Nessus is not the world's first free open source vulnerability scanner. However, it is the most ubiquitous open source scanner in use today, and has been for many years. The Nessus Project was conceived early in 1998. At the time, open source vulnerability scanners had fallen behind the well-funded commercial products of the same ilk. It was then that Renaud Deraison decided to...