Installing Nessus on Backtrack 3 final

This week Backtrack 3 final was released. The first thing I wanted to do after downloading and running the Backtrack 3 vmware image, was installing Nessus. About a year ago at security4all a post was written to explain how to install Nessus on Backtrack 3 beta. While this did not work out for me on the final release, I did find some info on the remote-exploit forms which helped me out:

  • Download the Nessus and NessusClient Fedora Core 8 RPM’s from the Nessus website (note: I tried it first with the Fedora Core 9 RPM’s and this did not work out for me)
  • Convert them to TGZ :

rpm2tgz Nessus-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

rpm2tgz NessusClient-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

  • Use the Slackware Package Tool to extract and install the packages from the current directory:

pkgtool

  • Configure the application:

cd /opt/
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nessus/sbin:/opt/nessus/bin:
cp /usr/lib/libssl.so /lib
cp /usr/lib/libcrypto.so /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessus.so.3 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessusrx.so.0 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libpcap-nessus.so.3 /lib
cd /lib
ln libssl.so libssl.so.6
ln libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.6

nano /etc/ld.so.conf
/opt/nessus/lib #add this line to the config file

ldconfig
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-mkcert
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-adduser

  • Next update your plugins. Make use you registered at the Nessus website. Use the code they emailed to you below.

cd /opt/nessus/etc/nessus
nessus-fetch –register XXX-YYY-ZZZ-VVV

  • Run the Nessus Server:

/opt/nessus/sbin/nessusd

  • Launch the Client

/opt/nessus/bin/NessusClient

All credits to williamc for providing this guide.

Source: forums.remote-exploit.org

Some other changes I made to my backtrack installation to improve usability:

Automatically boot the GUI instead of the CLI interface:

  • Change initlevel 3 to 4 in inittab

Automatically launch yakuake, the Quake like console application

Add a bash script in /home/.kde/Autostart

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11 Responses to “Installing Nessus on Backtrack 3 final

  • 1
    Security4all
    June 24th, 2008 14:46

    My tutorial was for Backtrack 2. I must admit I never got around to play with Backtrack 3 a lot.

    Thank you for this update!!!

  • 2
    Robert
    June 25th, 2008 19:20

    I followed the steps above, many more libs are missing from the vmware backtrack 3 version.

  • 3
    Interesting Information Security Bits for June 25th, 2008 « Infosec Ramblings
    June 25th, 2008 21:14

    [...] points us at a way to get Nessus 3 installed on Backtrack 3. Very cool, but watch that new [...]

  • 4
    Wouter Veugelen
    June 25th, 2008 23:19

    That’s odd. I have it working here with exactly performing these steps

  • 5
    Tom Gilis
    June 26th, 2008 15:44

    Thanks Wouter, works like a charm .

    Regards

  • 6
    Bob
    July 2nd, 2008 23:00

    This worked perfectly for me. Thanks!

  • 7
    JoeD0T
    July 9th, 2008 07:56

    Perfect tutorial. I got nessus up and running on BT3 in 7 minuts

  • 8
    trv
    July 24th, 2008 09:42

    A thought:

    Can one create an iso image using these instructions, to have bt3 with nessus3 embedded? Of course for personal use only, not to distribute..

  • 9
    Scott
    July 26th, 2008 02:14

    Following your instructions – got down to the point for ldconfig and ran into an error after /opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-mkcert

    Error is for libssl.so4 – “/opt/nessus//sbin/nessusd: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    Executing nessusd failed. Make sure your library loader is configured properly and that nessusd is in your $PATH

    Only difference is that I’m using RedHat version instead of Fedora.

    How do I go about correcting so I can load Nessus on BT3?

  • 10
    fige
    April 10th, 2009 02:43

    How about nessus 4??? is there any possible way to install it to BT3??

  • 11
    Wouter Veugelen
    April 10th, 2009 09:17

    I didn’t try to install Nessus 4 yet. Why don’t you give BackTrack 4 beta a try? It is much easier to install packages in BT4 since it is Ubuntu based. In BT4 you will be able to easily install the RPM and DEB packages from the Nessus website!

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