Nessus Tutorial for Beginners: Vulnerability Management (PUT THIS ON YOUR RESUME!)

Hey everybody, Josh here. Welcome back to

my channel. I do a lot of videos on IT

cyber security education and career

things, and today's video is going to be

on vulnerability management. We're

actually going to be doing a

vulnerability management lab where we

install Nessus Essentials and we install

VMware Workstation Player, and set up

Windows 10 inside of a VM, install some

old deprecated software on it, and then

we're going to be doing some

vulnerability scans against that virtual

machine to kind of discover any

vulnerabilities that might be on there,

and then we're going to go ahead and

remediate one or two of those just so we

can kind of observe what's happening. I

figured this would be a good video to do

because there's like quite a few

vulnerability management jobs on

LinkedIn and I've gotten a

lot of spam from recruiters for these

type of positions, and actually the last

real job I had I was a vulnerability

management program manager for King

County here in Washington State so I

kind of did this on an ongoing basis for

a while. Basically what vulnerability

management is continuously assessing

your assets, discovering vulnerabilities,

remediating them to an acceptable risk,

and then kind of starting the process

over and over again to kind of make sure

the risk in the whole organization is

low or at least an acceptable level. So I

think if you kind of watch this video

and practice it a few times, you can get

pretty good at it and get an idea of how

vulnerability management might work in

like a larger corporation. This is

definitely something you can put on your

resume. It might look something like this.

So it will definitely help you out. So

yeah, if you're excited to learn

vulnerability management, consider

smashing that like button and let's get

started. So the first thing we're going

to do is go ahead and

download and install VMware Player. Now

you probably want to have like a

semi-decent computer to be able

to do this, maybe like at least eight

gigabytes of ram and maybe dual core

or something. But if you don't know about

any of that, just try to go ahead and do

it, and if something fails, then it fails.=

I suppose. But go ahead and download

VMware Player. I'll put a link to this in

the description. Just download

for Windows. I'm not gonna do it again

because I already have it, but just go

ahead and like click this, download it,

and install it. You can see mine started

downloading, I'm just going to go ahead

and cancel this. And then while you're

waiting for VMware Player to download,

we'll go ahead and download the Windows

10 ISO. That's basically a file that'll

let us install windows 10 onto our

virtual machine. So again, I'll put a link

to this in the description as well, but

just go ahead and go to it, and then

you'll go to where it says create

Windows 10 installation media and you'll

say download tool, and when

this downloads, just go ahead and open it.

Don't be surprised if this takes a while

to like start up and download. So we'll

just say accept. And then we're going to

click

create installation media. We want to get

an ISO file so we'll say next. This looks

good. And we're going to say ISO file, be

sure to select this. And then we'll just

choose where it goes. I like this nice xp

pro ISO that I have. Go ahead and put it

in a folder, just remember what folder

you put in. So I'll just save it to my C:

_ISOs folder and then we'll

wait for this to finish. And while this

is going, we can actually

download and install Nessus

Essentials which is going to

be the vulnerability scanner that we use

to actually conduct our scans. So I'll

put a link to this in the description as

well, but you can probably find it on google.

And just basically like fill this thing

out. After you fill this out, you'll be

able to download it and it will send

like a key to your email, so just go

ahead and- actually I'll just do it. Just

fill this thing out, cool. So it will send

an email inside of your email, I can't

show it because it has a key and like, I

don't know, so inside of your email

there'll be like a button that says

download Nessus and then there will be a

key. Go ahead and click the button to

download Nessus and it will take you to

a page that looks like this, and just

click on Nessus. And we already have an

activation code, it should be in your

email, so we'll pick the one for, this one,

it says Windows Server 2008 blah blah

blah, and then it says 10 in here. So

we'll download this. Just say agree and

then, you know, download it anywhere and

then meanwhile remember in the

background windows 10 should be still

downloading virtual vmware player might

be downloading still too so we just have

to install that on your own i'm not

going to show it on the screen because i

already have it installed here we are at

the tenable setup so we just say next

accept and just accept this location and

then go ahead and install it and then

say finish

and then it's going to kind of um show

this like socket up here like localhost

in the port um i would recommend saving

this url because it's it's kind of

annoying if you lose it so just save it

in like a notepad somewhere or something

like this and then we'll say connect via

ssl and just say advanced and then say

proceed and this takes a while to set up

the very first time it has to like

initialize and install things and i

assume download a whole bunch of

definitions or something like this so

just go get like some coffee or

something while you while you wait for

this to happen because it will take a

while to do and we're going to say

nessus essentials it's essentially free

you can read the i guess license

agreement if you want but we're going to

install essentials and then just fill

this thing out and we'll get an

activation code i believe i have one

already um it should have emailed it to

you actually it should have emailed the

activation code to you so maybe skip

this and then just paste the activation

code that was that was in your email

that you already received and just

continue and then this is where you're

going to set up a username and password

just make sure you don't forget this it

might be troublesome you know if you

forget it you'll have to reset it or

something like this so just uh set up a

password i guess and this this is a part

that takes a while so just you know go

get coffee or sandwich or something and

we will meet back here okay so while

this is still installing and

initializing and doing everything it

needs to do let's go ahead and set up

our virtual machine since this is going

to take some time anyway so by now you

should have downloaded and installed um

vmware workstation player so we'll just

go ahead and open this up and check on

your windows 10 iso download it should

be finished by now as well maybe it

looks something like this and then it

shows you like where it's at the ci so

it's windows or yeah wherever you put

yours so just take note of this and

we'll say finish cool and then we're

going to create a new virtual machine

inside of vmware workstation player

we'll go to player and then file and

then new virtual machine and then

for the installer we're going to say

browse and then we'll just browse to

wherever you downloaded the windows 10

iso so this could probably be named

something better but that's okay so

we'll say next and just name this

something appropriate this is fine this

location's fine i guess you can change

it if you want so we'll say next maximum

disk size um this is fine we're not

gonna really put anything on it i'm just

gonna put set mine at 50 and then we'll

go to customize hardware and for memory

like if you don't know how much ram you

have maybe just like leave this as it is

i'm going to increase mine a little bit

i'll increase this a little bit if you

don't know about your cpu just leave it

as is but we do have to change the

network adapter we should change it to

bridged without explaining too deeply

bridge kind of puts this virtual machine

on the same network as your actual

physical computer so your nessus

implement implementation can talk to the

virtual machine

more easily this looks good we'll close

this and this is good power on after

creation we'll say finish kind of move

tenable

to the side

and then after the vm finishes getting

kind of created it's going to launch and

then we're going to have a chance to

install windows be sure to press any key

to boot into the iso when it asks and if

your cursor is gone you can see

in the lower left it says like press

control alt to release your cursor and

then you can get your cursor back so

we're just going to install windows 10.

so we'll just say next install and say i

don't have a product key you can close

this message down here and just pick

windows 10 pro and say next and we'll

say accept say next and say custom and

then this is our blank hard drive so

click on that the only one you can click

and just say next and then this will

take some time to install too so i'll

kind of come back when one of these

finishes cool so it looks like both

finished now i'll just finish setting up

the vm i will say yes and us and skip

and for nessus we'll just kind of uh

we'll close this thing here and then

we'll we'll just kind of wait on this

until we finish setting up the virtual

machine

and we'll say set up for personal use

next and then we'll say offline account

limited experience and then just name

i don't know just name it like admin and

put make a password but just remember

what it is make it like something simple

because we're going to use this later

for the credentialed scans so just

remember what it is it's troublesome you

know if you forget it

just make up make up something for these

if it asks you this is just like you

know a junk vm no one cares say no for

all of these things not now cool okay

now everything is totally set up we have

our vm here and then we have our nessus

essentials set up and ready to go so for

now we're just going to do a kind of

basic scan against the virtual machine

there's we're going to do a credentialed

scan later which i'll kind of explain

but i just want to make sure we can scan

it and make sure we can kind of get some

kind of result back so before we do that

i'm going to go to the vm and like get

the ip address from it so go make sure

to go to the vm not your actual computer

but go to the vm click start open up

command line and then we will type

ipconfig just to get the ipv4 ip address

and we're going to ping this from our

local machine just to make sure that we

can reach it i guess essentially so open

up the command like command line on your

pc and we will just say we'll just ping

this ip address so we'll just say ping

10.0.0.189 and then we'll do dash t

which means like perpetual ping like

keep going forever until we cancel it

and we see like it's it's timing out so

we just have to disable the firewall on

our virtual machine here you might not

want to do this in production it just

depends on like what other controls you

have in place so we will minimize this

we'll go to our vm here and then we will

type

wf.msc it's this windows firewall

microsoft something console can't

remember so we'll open the firewall and

we're just going to do a lot of this

stuff for our lab so we'll go to

defender firewall properties and just on

these first three tabs we'll just turn

all three of them off like domain

profile off private profile off public

profile off and we'll just say okay here

the firewall is off and then we notice

that the ping is kind of going through

on our our local computer here so we can

press control c to cancel this and we'll

just copy this ip address this is the ip

address of our vm we will close this and

then this is um our nessus essentials

essentially it's it's like a web app

essentially so we'll go back to this and

then we're going to create a new scan so

we'll just do a basic network scan here

and so we'll just name it like i don't

know windows 10 single host something

like this and then for targets we'll

just paste this is our our virtual

machine's ip address so we'll just kind

of paste it in here we don't really need

to change anything else on here we're

just going to do like a manual scan but

you you know take note that you can do

like a scheduled scan if you're working

in an organization you want to scan like

every x days or like every tuesday or

something like this or scan common ports

support scan all ports obviously all

ports going to take longer you can

customize it there's a bunch of settings

that you can kind of explore in here on

your own and there is um there's also

this credentials page which we'll get

into in a little bit but basically you

can we won't do this yet but you can

enter credentials in here like the

username and password that we made when

we created the virtual machine and then

the scanner will kind of go into the

machine more deeply and like look

through the registry and the file system

and like more things and the reason for

this is you can kind of discover more

vulnerabilities if you have like

deprecated software or insecure services

or something like this running

this is what this kind of credential the

credentials page is for but right now

we're just going to do like a basic

network kind of port scan it's not going

to be too deep just want to make sure we

can scan it and get some kind of

information back so we have our ip

address and we will just say save we'll

remove this credentials oops and then

just say save and then this is our this

is our scan um it's not running it's

just kind of like a scan that's

configured that we can run in the future

so we'll just go ahead and click launch

now and launch the scan and i believe

you can you can kind of sometimes see

the progress of it like if you click it

you can see you know what it has done so

far it makes like little logs and then

the findings will kind of be on this

page but we can just go back click back

to my host and then back to my scans and

we'll just kind of wait for this to

finish cool so we can now see that our

scan has finished over here um says like

today and there's like a check mark so

we can just kind of click this to look

at the individual results for it and you

can see like down here like blue is info

green is low medium it's yellow etc and

depending on the organization you work

for like a lot of people a lot of orgs

like won't even depending on what they

are a lot of orgs won't even like really

touch medium or lows because they have

like so many criticals and highs that

kind of take precedence and because we

didn't use any credentials for our scan

we don't really see that much of what

might be actually vulnerable inside the

vm but we do see like some things here

so we can click we can click

vulnerabilities up here and just kind of

look through these a tiny bit we can see

like smb signing is not required if

that's something that your org cares

about you can kind of read about it here

more and consider like implementing

implement implementing the solution to

kind of remediate this vulnerability

there's other kind of interesting things

in here trace route information it's

listed as info means it means it's not

could not necessarily be a vulnerability

but just something you should be aware

of that you can see tracer information

which means like icmp is

accepted on this on this particular host

and down here we can see

target credential status by

authentication protocol and it says like

nessus was not able to successfully

authenticate to the remote target

because we didn't actually provide any

credentials and we can see that down

here um smb was detected on port 445

means it's listening on 445 but we

didn't provide any credentials that's a

kind of vulnerability that's a

vulnerability scan some basic results so

the next thing we're going to do is

we're going to we're going to set up the

virtual machine to be able to accept

authenticated scans and then we're going

to provide some credentials to nessus

and then we're going to try to rescan

the virtual machine with credentials and

then kind of compare the results of the

new scan which with these ones that

we're looking at here so we'll go back

to my scans actually we'll go back to

the virtual machine here and then we'll

open up

services.msc and there may be better

ways to do what i'm doing like

especially if you're in like a corporate

environment um i got these steps from

nessus the things that they recommend to

actually do credentialed scans against

windows hosts that are not on the domain

so that's that's kind of what we're

using here so i'm just going to first

i'm going to enable the remote registry

remote registry which will allow the

scanner to connect to this computer's

registry and like kind of crawl through

the registry and look for insecure

configurations like maybe deprecated

cypher suites that might be enabled you

kind of enable and disable those in the

registry so i'm just going to enable

remote registry so our scanner can

connect to the registry so i enabled it

and i turned it on and then next we're

going to be careful when you close this

you don't close the actual vm i'm just

closing like the window inside i'll

close the firewall and next thing i'll

enable file and printer sharing so oh it

looks like it's possibly already on turn

on sharing so anyone with network uh i

don't think public folder sharing needs

to be on i was going to turn this on but

it looks like it's on already turn on

network discovery file and printer

sharing oh looks like it's already on if

yours are not on just make sure to turn

the file and printer printer sharing on

and then we will go to user account

control and this is not good to do um

but our computer is not on the domain so

we have to do these kind of hack things

to be able to scan it so i'll disable

this say okay so yes and then we're

going to open the registry and then

add a key that's supposed to allow the

remote account to like connect in and

next we're going to connect to the

registry and add a key that's supposed

to i guess further disable user account

control for the remote account we're

going to use it to connect to this

computer during our scan so just go to

start and type reg edit again i got this

documentation from nessus i'll put a

link to in the description so we will

browse to a local machine here so we'll

go to local machine software microsoft

windows current version policies system

and then inside here we'll create a

d word called local account token filter

policy so

local account token filter policy local

account token filter policy say enter

and then we'll set this value to 1 and

we'll close this and we'll go ahead and

restart our virtual machine at this

point cool and then we'll log in

remember our username i made mine admin

and then whatever your password is just

make sure you don't forget it and we

should be ready to scan our computer now

we're going to edit the scan that we

made so go back to nessus essentials and

then we will oh so check this box next

to the scan and go to more and then go

to configure and then we're going to add

a set of credentials to this and we're

going to add a windows credentials so

we're going to use password and remember

our username is admin so if you go to

the vm and go to cm cmd and type like

who am i um the name is the name is

admin right so we'll say admin and then

whatever you made the password and i

believe

i believe we can like leave all these

things as default if it breaks i mean

maybe we can come back and configure or

if it doesn't work we can check it so

we'll save this as it is so saved and

we'll go back and back to scans and then

we'll we'll run this scan one more time

when this finishes we'll compare the

results with the first scan and

technically we should see more results

with this one because we enabled

credentialed scanning and we kind of

configured the vm to accept remote scan

so we'll see what happens so i'll just

pause this and i'll come back i'll pause

the video and come back when it finishes

okay it's been a few minutes and it

looks like our scan is finished here so

we will click on this and we can see

like immediately remember last time we

we had like one medium and a bunch of

infos now we have like seven criticals

38 highs and you know four mediums and a

whole bunch more infos it's pretty

interesting so before we like really

dive into the vulnerabilities and all

this i'll just click on history over

here really quick and this is the

current one and you can see the

vulnerabilities down here um you can see

you know five percent criticals etc and

then if we click on our first scan we

can see like we didn't use credentials

for this so we couldn't look at the file

system or the registry or any other

running services or or any of that so

you can see this there's like a big

difference in doing credentialed scan

versus like uncredentialed scans so this

kind of like solidifies the importance

of running credential scans whether or

not you're like scanning cisco devices

or like linux machines or like windows

machines or macs or whatever if you can

use credentials um you can really like

discover more vulnerabilities so i'll

just click on the vulnerabilities tab

here first and we'll just kind of like

look at these a little bit we can see

like um this this is essentially the

list of findings and some of the these

are mixed so if we click on this for

example we can see it's like a

combination of like mostly criticals and

highs and you can see it's like mostly

edge mostly edge which can probably be

remediated from like updating running

windows updates essentially and you can

kind of look at these individual ones

and and dive uh more deep into them to

see like what the actual thing is and

like how to fix it

uh so we can go back a little bit we'll

back up a little bit more so

vulnerabilities around edge around

windows around a bunch of other stuff um

if we click on remediations this tab

kind of gives us like a high level like

instructions on how to like remediate

most of the findings from like a really

high level basically just like run

windows updates is what i'm is what i'm

seeing here um so security updates

install this kb to fix a bunch of other

ones and then all this is pretty much

windows updates and this vpr top threats

these vpr vpr top threats is essentially

what tenable is like recommending we

prioritize to remediate probably based

on um cvss score and like whatever other

metrics they use so like i would say um

before like if i were

doing this in like a an organization

like the first thing you want to do is

like make sure you have third-party

patching and like windows os patching

like set up properly and like properly

being like tested and deployed on

regular intervals so you don't have to

like kind of go through and deal with

these like individual vulnerabilities

the related that are related to things

that can be easily fixed by like augment

automated patching and stuff like this

so before um i start like

remediating these and fixing them i'm

gonna install some like deprecated

software on this computer like a really

old version of firefox and then we're

gonna kind of run another scan and then

observe the results from that as well so

i'm gonna get this old version of

firefox i'll put a i'll put a link to it

in the description i was gonna say i'm

worried about doing that but i'll put a

link to it in the description it's

really old from six years ago apparently

so we'll just download this uh firefox

3612. and make sure to do this make sure

you're doing this in the virtual machine

don't accidentally do it on your on your

computer and that's

what i'm actually doing so make sure to

go to the virtual machine so we'll open

up edge in our virtual machine and then

we'll paste oh no i can't paste it i'm

just gonna search like download

deprecated firefox i shouldn't i

shouldn't use the word deprecated i'll

say download old firefox and

i think i can click here and do it if

you want to downgrade directory i'll go

to directory of all old ones and then

i'll get 3612. this is random by the way

you can get any old version that you

want i'm just using this one because i i

did it already um win32 uh en us and

i'll get this so we'll open this and

then install this super old version of

firefox we'll say next standard sure and

then sure we can launch it i guess uh

yeah why not cool so this is old old

firefox so now we have an old firefox on

our computer so we'll close this this is

our virtual machine remember here's

firefox and then so we will go back to

our scans here this is on our host

machine and this is nessus so we'll go

back to our scans and we don't need to

change our scan anymore we'll just click

launch and it will just run another scan

it will do the same thing scan all scan

the common open ports inspect the

registry inspect the services and then

inspect the file system it's going to

discover this old deprecated version of

firefox there's like a million

vulnerabilities in it probably so

hopefully we'll we'll see that reflected

in the scan results when this finishes

here in a couple of minutes okay it's

been a couple more minutes and our scan

is finished so we can click on this

again and we'll see like our our

vulnerabilities like went up to 68

critical now so before we kind of dive

into these again we'll check out the

history just so we can see like a trend

in these so this is the first one in the

bottom here we can see only info no

credentials provided second one is our

credentials provided and we you know we

have a little bit more we have some

criticals discovered in some highs and

then we installed firefox like a really

old one and then this is our current

scan there's like a bunch more criticals

whole bunch of criticals so we'll go to

the um rem the vulnerabilities tab here

and then we can kind of see this one at

the very top mixed with firefox and

total count of like 141 so if we click

on this it's just absolutely chuck full

of criticals just because that version

of firefox is like so old it has so many

vulnerabilities and it's not like you

have to like go through like fix each

one of these one at a time you can

either just like upgrade firefox to the

latest one or just like completely

uninstall it and it will remediate the

vulnerabilities so we can click

remediations we pretty much see the same

thing as last time except for um at the

very top now we have a recommendation to

upgrade firefox and then again this vpr

top threats we have this uh kind of

firefox in here again history first scan

no credentials second credentials

default windows install third scan

firefox old firefox whole bunch of whole

bunch of vulnerabilities that need to be

remediated so the next step we're going

to we're just going to try to remediate

as many of these vulnerabilities as we

can by doing like really simple things

like we're just going to uninstall

firefox totally and then we're going to

just essentially like run windows

updates until there's no more updates to

that need to happen essentially so we'll

go to our virtual machine here and then

we can go to appwiz.cpl that's like a

kind of shortcut to go to the this thing

so we can go to firefox i'm just going

to uninstall it to be honest uninstall

firefox and then i'll go to windows

update and let's see

i guess i'll just manually check for

updates i'll leave the settings to like

whatever they are and then you can do

this too just keep like running windows

updates and res you might have to like

restart and then run it again then

restart and run it again i'll pause this

and i'll i'll just kind of like let the

updates happen then i'll come back to it

again okay it updated for a while and

it's asking for a restart so just go

ahead and restart and repeat the process

okay when it comes back up just go ahead

and log in again and go to up windows

updates again and just click check for

updates one more time just to make sure

okay it looks like it's installing some

more so i'll go ahead and pause this and

kind of let this continue so it actually

looks like the updates are done so we'll

go back to nessus go back to my scans

and we'll run our scan one more time so

we should expect to see a lot of the

remediations done there should be a lot

less highs and criticals like firefox

should be gone like all the windows

updates should be no longer required but

we will let this finish and then check

it out in a couple of minutes or for you

it will be instantly because i'll edit

this out so our last scan has finally

finished so let's check this out so

we'll click on this and before we like

really dive in deep we can kind of see

there's some some highs and some

criticals and highs but we'll go to

history over here and this is our

current scan and this is the last scan

right here before we uninstalled firefox

and before we updated windows so we can

see there's quite a bit more mediums

quite a bit more sorry there's quite a

bit more criticals quite a bit more

highs so current after after removing

firefox and running windows updates and

then b4 so there's quite a bit less and

this this scan right here this is the

default install of windows and then this

is the current one after updating

windows so current or default and then

current so we can kind of dive into

these like a little bit it looks like

the remaining vulnerabilities um most of

them are around microsoft edge it looks

like maybe windows update didn't update

edge for some reason uh we can check

this one a bunch of highs um i can't

read these microsoft 3d viewer base 3d

code something maybe this is some like

native app that's installed oh yeah it

is so it looks like there's some like

random stuff that's still on this

virtual machine that maybe it's like out

of date or or something like this and

you can just kind of look through this i

won't like do any further remediations

because this video is getting kind of

long so but maybe you could consider

you know figuring out exactly like how

to update microsoft edge or like

uninstall it if you're allowed to do

that like i don't know but yeah it's

pretty interesting um to kind of

experiment with this and like install

like really old stuff or me maybe even

like get a hold of like a windows xp iso

and install windows xp right and scan

that and see what kind of like swiss

cheese scan results like come back it's

like going to be absolutely full of

holes but yeah that is vulnerability

management those are kind of like the

really kind of the core components of

vulnerability management just like

scanning and remediating scanning and

remediating but you know a lot more goes

into it because you have to have like

you know when you work at a big

organization you usually will make some

kind of standard and like policies and

procedures and you have to kind of bring

all the departments in and work with the

individual groups to like get

credentials for all their individual

resources or maybe you use like a domain

account to scan everything and it it

gets a little bit more complicated when

you're in a large organization but this

is this is pretty much the guts of it

just like scanning stuff finding

vulnerabilities and then essentially

remediating them you want to automate it

as much of it as you can as possible

like like updating like the third-party

apps like windows update and in this

kind of thing and you want to have like

a secure build standard so like make

sure the build is like already like

remediated and like secure enough before

it goes into production to kind of

reduce the amount of vulnerabilities

that get introduced but now that you've

kind of like watched this you have a

pretty good idea i would say of how

vulnerability management works so you

can you know practice this a bunch and

consider like reading up on how to

implement vulnerability management on

like a large organization then you can

like put something on your resume that

might look something like this and then

go ahead and start applying to jobs that

are looking for like vulnerability

management engineers or vulnerability

management analysts or like whatever

they're calling him because it's a

relatively like straightforward process

it's pretty easy technically speaking

like the hard part about vulnerability

vulnerability management usually comes

from like dealing with the humans and

like getting everyone to like coordinate

that's like really difficult yeah i hope

you enjoyed this um you thought if you

thought it was interesting you know i'd

appreciate if you liked and consider

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questions or comments criticism please

like let me know in the comment section

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patreon but other than that thank you so

much for watching and we will see you in

the next video bye

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you