NAME

       openvas-nasl - NASL Attack Scripting Language

SYNOPSIS

       openvas-nasl <[-Vh] [-T tracefile] [-s] [-t target] [-c config_file] [-d] [-sX] > files...

DESCRIPTION

       openvas-nasl  executes  a  set of NASL scripts against a given target host. It can also be
       used to determine if a NASL script has any syntax errors by running it in  parse  (-p)  or
       lint (-L) mode.

OPTIONS

       -T tracefile
              Makes  nasl  write  verbosely what the script does in the file tracefile , ala 'set
              -x' under sh

       -t target
              Apply the NASL script to target which may be a single  host  (127.0.0.1),  a  whole
              subnet (192.168.1.0/24) or several subnets (192.168.1.0/24, 192.168.243.0/24)

       -e iface
              Specifies  the  network  interface  to  be  used  as  the  source  for  established
              connections.

       -s     Sets the return value of safe_checks() to 1. (See the OpenVAS Scanner documentation
              to know what the safe checks are) Implies -B.

       -D     Only run the description part of the script.

       -B     Runs in description mode before running the script.

       -L     Lint the script  (run extended checks).

       -X     Run the script with disabled signature verification.

       -h     Show help

       -V     Show the version of NASL.

       -d     Output debug information to stderr.

       -r port-range
              This  is the default range of ports that the scanner plugins will probe. The syntax
              of this option is flexible, it can be a  single  range  ("1-1500"),  several  ports
              ("21,23,80"),  several  ranges  of  ports ("1-1500,32000-33000"). Note that you can
              specify UDP and TCP ports by prefixing each range by T  or  U.  For  instance,  the
              following range will make openvas scan UDP ports 1 to 1024 and TCP ports 1 to 65535
              : "T:1-65535,U:1-1024".

       -k key=value
              Set KB key to value. Can be used multiple times.

SEE ALSO

       openvas(8), openvas-nasl-lint(1)

HISTORY

       NASL comes from a private project called 'pkt_forge', which was written in  late  1998  by
       Renaud  Deraison and which was an interactive shell to forge and send raw IP packets (this
       pre-dates Perl's Net::RawIP by a couple of weeks). It was then extended to do a wide range
       of network-related operations and integrated into the scanner as 'NASL'.

       The  parser was completely hand-written and a pain to work with. In Mid-2002, Michel Arboi
       wrote a bison parser for NASL, and he and Renaud  Deraison  re-wrote  NASL  from  scratch.
       Although the "new" NASL was nearly working as early as August 2002, Michel's laziness made
       us wait for early 2003 to have it working completely.

       After the original authors decided to stop the  Open  Source  development  in  2005,  most
       changes and maintenance works were done by Greenbone Networks.

AUTHOR

       Most  of  the engine is (C) 2003 Michel Arboi, most of the built-in functions are (C) 2003
       Renaud Deraison.  Most new code since 2005 developed by Greenbone Networks GmbH.