Tenable Nessus Agent

Install Tenable Nessus Agents and register with a management server.

Tags:

• install
• configure
• unlink

Requirements

Download the Nessus Agent installer from https://www.tenable.com/downloads/nessus-agents and copy it to a local archive server. Tenable does not permit using their servers as a download mirror for automated installations.

For RedHat, the archive server where you host the RPM installer could be a yum repository on a locally hosted Nexus Repository Manager or a RedHat Satellite channel. When this role executes, it assumes the repository is already configured and the package would be available via standard yum install commands.

For Windows, Nexus also offers Chocolatey/Nuget hosting option for archiving the MSI installer after packaging it for nuget installs.

Role Defaults

The nessus_agent_group variable defaults to either LINUX or WINDOWS, depending on the server it is connected to and can be overridden at runtime.

# The key should be overridden at runtime to a base16 string with ~64 characters.
nessus_agent_key: ""
nessus_agent_host: cloud.tenable.com
nessus_agent_port: 443

nessus_unlink: false

Role Variables

chocolatey_source: https://nexus.example.com/repository/nuget-hosted/

Dependencies

- src: deekayen.chocolatey
  when: ansible_os_family == "Windows"

Example Playbook

- hosts: all

  vars:
    nessus_agent_group: AWS
    nessus_agent_key: 5075742061207265616c206b657920696e7374656164206f6620746869732e00

  roles:
     - deekayen.nessus_agent

Tenable Nessus Agent Chocolatey Package

This package wraps the Tenable Nessus Agent msi in a nuget package so that the win_chocolately Ansible module can install it.

Pre-Tasks

1. Install chocolatey within your local PowerShell installation
2. Add your Nuget API key into your chocolatey configuration choco apikey -k MYKEY-COPIED-FROM-NEXUS-PROFILE https://nexus.example.com/repository/nuget-hosted/
3. Download the agent installer msi and store it in the tools subfolder as the name dotNetAgentSteup.Msi
4. Update the tenable-nessus-agent.nuspec element with the specific version of the agent downloads

Create the package

1. Open PowerShell and navigate to the same folder where the .nuspec file exists
2. Run chocolatey pack command: choco pack
3. You can test this package on a server by either running the the chocolatey commands manually or by using the win_chocolatey Ansible module manually, or through Ansible Tower/AWX adhoc commands.
4. Push the package to the nexus repo choco push .\TenableNessusAgent.7.4.3.nupkg -source https://nexus.example.com/repository/nuget-hosted/

Package Arguments

The package takes to arguments which can be passed via Ansible params element on the the win_chocolatey module

• /NessusGroups: - Host group this agent should be added to when linking with Nessus host.
• /NessusServer: - Nessus host to link with (default: cloud.tenable.com)
• /NessusKey: - Key used for linking with Nessus host. This is blank by default.