How to make OpenVAS listen on an external interface?

Question

I need to connect to my OpenVAS from the Internet to conduct penetration tests.

I didn't found any way to make it permanently listen on the external interface: openvas-start causes it to listen on 127.0.0.1.

I already tried to modify the configuration files, but it seems either I'm doing it wrong or something is overriding configurations when it starts.

Any help would be appreciated.

P.S: I'm using Kali 2.0.

Answer 1

Since we're on systemd, you actually need to modify 3 .service files:

cd /lib/systemd/system

Files are: greenbone-security-assistant.service, openvas-manager.service and openvas-scanner.service.

To make it quick you may want to use sed. This line will replace all 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 which will allow all services be avaliable on all interfaces. You should replace 0.0.0.0 to the address of your choice.

sed -e 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/g' greenbone-security-assistant.service openvas-manager.service openvas-scanner.service

Verify, that all will be done as you want. If you're happy with the changes, just add -i to the end of previous command.

sed -e 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/g' greenbone-security-assistant.service openvas-manager.service openvas-scanner.service -i

Lastly you need to reload daemons, since you've made changes to files and restart services.

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart greenbone-security-assistant.service openvas-manager.service openvas-scanner.service

Verify, that all services are listening on desired host:

ss -nalt

If restarting sevices didn't work, try to restart server itself.

Answer 2

1. openvas-stop
2. gsad --listen=0.0.0.0
3. openvas-start
4. From any client machine try https://kali-ip/
5. Enjoy accessing openvas web

Answer 3

There is much more simple solution. You can redirect external ip port to localhost using firewall. Assuming that Your's server external IP is 10.0.0.10:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth0.route_localnet=1

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d 10.0.0.10 --dport 443 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:9392

That's all, now connect to https://10.0.0.10

I also tried to edit configuration IPs but there are in many places and seem to break OMP authorization. This solution was tested with latest Kali/OpenVAS (2016.09).

Answer 4

Quoting the openvasd man page:

-a , --listen= Tell the server to only listen to connections on the address which is an IP, not a machine name. For instance, "openvasd -a 192.168.1.1" will make openvasd only listen to requests going to 192.168.1.1 This option is useful if you are running openvasd on a gateway and if you don't want people on the outside to connect to your openvasd.

You can append this option in the startup script located in /etc/init.d/openvas-scanner in the DAEMONOPTS constant.

Answer 5

Edit /etc/default/greenbone-security-assistant:

Change 127.0.0.1 to your IP

GSA_ADDRESS=your_server_IP_address

Then, restart the services:

root@tiger:/home/fw# ps aux | grep openvassd | grep -v grep
root      8918  2.6  1.2 138644 12212 ?        Ss   17:31   2:25 openvassd: Waiting for incoming connections
root@tiger:/home/fw#
root@tiger:/home/fw# killall openvassd
root@tiger:/home/fw#
root@tiger:/home/fw# ps aux | grep openvassd | grep -v grep
root@tiger:/home/fw#
root@tiger:/home/fw# service openvas-scanner start
root@tiger:/home/fw# service openvas-manager start
root@tiger:/home/fw# service greenbone-security-assistant restart
root@tiger:/home/fw#
root@tiger:/home/fw# ps aux | grep openvassd | grep -v grep
root      9681 39.4  1.3 123836 13476 ?        Ds   19:02   0:02 openvassd: Reloaded 7750 of 46062 NVTs (16% / ETA: 00:19)
root      9682  0.0  0.1 114564  1528 ?        S    19:02   0:00 openvassd (Loading Handler)
root@tiger:/home/fw#

Try to access it from outside https://ip:9392

Answer 6

Oddly, I used both Firewallengineer and Tim Rain's answers and that solved my issue. I did notice that for whatever reason in /lib/systemd/system I had to put --allow-header-host myserver.mycompany.com athe the end of the ExactStart line.

In /etc/default/greenbone-security-assistant I had to set the GSA_Address as the server address. This is what worked for me. I also had to access the server as myserver.mycompany.com:9392/omp, as just myserver.mycompany.com would not resolve. I understand my company's DNS needs a cleaning but I don;t have the time to fix that. Thank you both for your information, it saved me a lot of time and taught me quite a bit too.

Hopefully this helps someone.