NAME

       openvas-nvt-sync - updates the OpenVAS security checks

SYNOPSIS

       openvas-nvt-sync

DESCRIPTION

       The  OpenVAS  Security  Scanner performs several security checks, each of them being coded as an external
       plugin coded in NASL. As new security holes are published every day, new plugins appear  on  the  OpenVAS
       site (www.openvas.org)
       The  script  openvas-nvt-sync  will  fetch all the newest security checks for you and install them at the
       proper location. Once this is done you will need to restart openvas-server(8) s so that it loads them and
       uses them for new security scans.

       openvas-nvt-sync uses rsync(1) and  md5sum(1) to do its job. In order to download  the  new  plugins  the
       machine where the script runs needs to have access to rsync.openvas.org using the rsync protocol (TCP/UDP
       port 873).

       If  you  are  behind  a  web  proxy  you can configure rsync to use it through the use of the RSYNC_PROXY
       environment variable. For more information see rsync(1).

SECURITY NOTES

       openvas-nvt-sync uses rsync(1) to retrieve the archive of the new plugins. The scripts  provided  by  the
       OpenVAS  project  might  not  be  signed.  Consequently, if somewhere where to poison your DNS server and
       force this script to retrieve NASL plugins on another site he would force your OpenVAS server to  execute
       NASL  scripts  when  running security tests.  Even if this might not do much harm (see the NASL reference
       guide for more information on that subject) you should be very careful when doing this.

SEE ALSO

       For more information see: rsync(1), openvasd(8) openvas-client(1).
       There is more information available at /usr/share/doc/openvas-plugins on Debian systems.

       You can find additional information about the OpenVAS project in http://www.openvas.org

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@debian.org> for the Debian  GNU/Linux
       system (but may be used on other systems).

       The openvas-nvt-sync script was written by DN-Systems Enterprise Internet Solutions GmbH.

The OpenVAS Project                              Septmeber 2008                              OPENVAS-NVT-SYNC(8)