Nessus: the free network security scanner
Renaud Deraison, Jordan Hrycaj · ;login:: the magazine of USENIX & SAGE · 2000
A network scanner is a tool for analyzing network services, available on a given set of systems. With Nessus, a new breed of scanners has been published capable of running real attacks, often called exploits, in order to determine that well-known system deficiencies can be exploited when running the attack against the scanned systems.