Vulnerability Scanner Overview: CVE, CVSS, and OpenVAS in Practice

The official room banner for Vulnerability Scanner Overview. Image Credit: TryHackMe.

Introduction

Welcome to my walkthrough of the TryHackMe room Vulnerability Scanner Overview! This is the final room in the Security Solutions module of the Cyber Security 101 path.

In my previous article, IDS Fundamentals, we looked at how an IDS keeps watching traffic that has already slipped past the firewall, catching intrusions after the fact through signatures and alerts. This room takes a step back from watching for attacks in progress and instead asks a more proactive question: what weaknesses exist in our systems before an attacker ever gets the chance to exploit them? We cover what a vulnerability actually is, how CVE and CVSS help track and prioritize them, and then get hands on with OpenVAS, an open source vulnerability scanner, to run a real scan and read through its findings.

Catch up on my previous article, IDS Fundamentals, by clicking the banner below.

The official room banner for IDS Fundamentals. Image Credit: TryHackMe.

What we will cover

• What a vulnerability is and how patching addresses it
• The major categories of vulnerability scans: authenticated versus…