Glossary

gvmd

Management daemon shipped with GVM 10 and later. Abbreviation for Greenbone Vulnerability Management Daemon.

openvassd

Scanner daemon used by GVM 10 and before. It listens for incoming connections and starts scan processes to run the actual vulnerability tests. It collects the results and reports them to the management daemon. With the GVM 11 release, it has been converted to the openvas application by removing the daemon and replacing the communication protocol. Abbreviation for OpenVAS Scanner Daemon.

openvas

Scanner application executable to run vulnerability tests against targets and to store scan results into a Redis database. Used in GVM 11 and later. It has originated from the openvassd.

openvasd

A new service introduced with the OpenVAS Scanner release 23.0 to execute nasl scripts and provide static version comparisons. It has a http based API to control scans and get results. The adaptation will be done in various downwards compatible ways. As of 23.0.1 openvas is using the /notus endpoint for version checks, additionally OpenVASD is setting up redis and controls openvas for scanning. In the next phases it will gradually take over openvas functionality with the end goal of replacing ospd-openvas and openvas completely.

OSPd

A framework for several scanner daemons speaking the Open Scanner Protocol (OSP).

ospd-openvas

A OSP scanner daemon managing the openvas executable for reporting scan results to the management daemon gvmd. Used in GVM 11 and later.

gsad

A web server providing the Greenbone Security Assistant web application.

GSA

The Greenbone Security Assistant (GSA) web application to control scans and access vulnerability information via a web interface in a browser.

GOS

Greenbone Operating System, the operating system of the Greenbone Enterprise Appliance. It provides the commercial version of the Greenbone Community Edition with enterprise support and features.

GSM

Greenbone Security Manager (GSM) is the former name of our commercial product line Greenbone Enterprise as hardware or virtual appliances.

GMP

The Greenbone Management Protocol (GMP) is an XML-based communication protocol provided by gvmd. It provides an API to create, read, update and delete scans and vulnerability information.

OSP

The Open Scanner Protocol is an XML-based communication protocol provided by ospd-openvas. It provides an API to start scans, get VT information and to receive scan results.

GVM

The Greenbone Community Edition consists of several services. This software framework has been named Greenbone Vulnerability Management (GVM) in the past.

Greenbone Community Edition

The Greenbone Community Edition covers the actual releases of the Greenbone application framework for vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management provided as open-source software to the community. The Greenbone Community Edition is adopted by external third parties, e.g., if the software framework is provided by a Linux distribution, it is build from the Greenbone Community Edition. It is developed as part of the commercial Greenbone Enterprise product line. Sometimes referred to as the OpenVAS framework.

Greenbone Community Containers

Container images that are pre-built on GitHub and available via dockerhub. These images can be used to run the newest versions of the Greenbone Community Edition without having to care about the operating system, compiler and build tool chains.

Greenbone Enterprise

Greenbone Enterprise is the Greenbone product line for on-premises solutions. Included are virtual or hardware Greenbone Enterprise Appliances with the Greenbone Operating System (GOS), the Greenbone Vulnerability Management (GVM) framework, and the Greenbone Enterprise Feed.

Greenbone Community Feed

The Greenbone Community Feed is the freely available feed for vulnerability information licensed as open-source. It contains basic scan configurations, report formats, port lists and the most important vulnerability tests. The provided data is updated on a daily basis with no warranty or promises for fixes or completeness.

Greenbone Enterprise Feed

The Greenbone Enterprise Feed is the commercial feed provided by Greenbone containing additional enterprise features like vulnerability tests for enterprise products, policy and compliance checks, extensive reports formats and special scan configurations. The feed comes with a service-level agreement ensuring support, quality assurance and availability.

VT

Vulnerability Tests (VTs), also known as Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs), are scripts written in the NASL programming language to detect vulnerabilities at remote hosts.

SCAP

Abbreviation for Security Content Automation Protocol. It is used for providing CPE and CVE data via the Greenbone Enterprise and Community Feeds.

CPE

Abbreviation for Common Platform Enumeration. Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) is a standardized method of describing and identifying classes of applications, operating systems, and hardware devices present among an enterprise’s computing assets.

CVE

Abbreviation for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. It provides unique, common identifiers for publicly known information-security vulnerabilities in publicly released software packages.

notus-scanner

A scanner to improve the so-called local security checks. Local security checks are comparisons of vulnerable and installed versions of a software. Before notus-scanner, all checks have been implemented in NASL scripts and each NASL script ran in an own openvas-scanner process. With notus-scanner, checks are run in one go per host. With the OpenVAS Scanner release 23.0 it got replaced by openvasd.

Feed

The feed is a set of different files continuously delivered via rsync and updated on a daily basis. It contains CPE, CVE, VT, CERT, Port List, Report Format and Scan Config information. The feed is available in a Commercial and Community edition.

NASL

The NASL Attack Scripting Language (NASL) is a language which is part of the OpenVAS Project and interpreted by the NASL interpreter. It is a simple language with focus on detecting vulnerabilities on network devices. Therefore it provides many built-in functions to attack hosts to discover vulnerabilities. A NASL script can be either run directly with the NASL interpreter openvas-nasl or within a scan with openvas.