Introduction

At first, hapless one, he prayed with serene soul, rejoicing in his comely garb. But when the blood-fed flame began to blaze from the holy offerings and from the resinous pine, a sweat broke forth upon his flesh, and the tunic clung to his sides, at every joint, close-glued, as if by a craftsman s hand; there came a biting pain that racked his bones; and then the venom, as of some deadly, cruel viper, begain to devour him.

Sophocles (440-430 BCE)

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...