How To Install Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Nessus is an open-source network vulnerability scanner for vulnerability assessments and penetration testing. It gives you malware detection, scanning of embedded devices, configurations auditing, control systems auditing, and compliance checks among other features. Also, Nessus is available in multiple types of versions, including the Nessus Essentials the free vulnerability scanner, and Nessus professional for professional pentester.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2 software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04.

By default, Nessus is available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now download the latest version of Nessus from the official page to your Ubuntu system using the following command:

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://www.tenable.com/downloads/api/v2/pages/nessus/files/Nessus-10.4.0-ubuntu1404_amd64.deb' \
  --output 'Nessus-10.4.0-ubuntu1404_amd64.deb'

Next, install the Nessus package using the following command:

sudo dpkg -i Nessus-10.4.0-ubuntu1404_amd64.deb

Once the installation is done, start the Nessus service and enable it to automatically start on reboot all in one go with:

sudo systemctl enable --now nessusd
sudo systemctl status nessusd

Step 3. Configure Firewall.

Now we set up an Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) with Mosquitto to allow public access on default web ports 8834:

sudo ufw allow "OpenSSH"
sudo ufw allow 8834/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Step 4. Accessing Nessus Security Scanner Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, now we open your web browser and type the URL http://your-IP-address:8834 If you get an error about the SSL Certificates, press Continue – This certificate is automatically generated by Nessus.

Next, select the type of Nessus installation that you want. In this example, you will install “Nessus Essentials”, so select the option “Nessus Essentials” and click Continue.

Enter your email address and other details to get the activation code, so that we can activate the product to use it further. The best way to get the code is to visit the Registration page and register for a Professional or free version to get an Activation one.

When the system asks you to create a Nessus Admin user, create that by setting a username and corresponding password. After that, you will have the working Nessus on your system.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nessus. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Nessus Security Scanner on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nessus website.