User guide
Copyright © 2014. Tenable Network Security, Inc. All rights reserved. Tenable Network Security and Nessus are registered trademarks of Tenable Network Security, Inc.
9
Creating a Nessus Client-Side Digital Certificate
To create a Nessus client digital certificate, run the commands and follow the prompts. Note that the defaults are in
brackets.
# /opt/nessus/sbin/nessuscli nessuscli mkcert-client
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creation of the Nessus SSL Client Certificates
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This script will now ask you for information to create SSL client certificates.
Nessus username for user: admin
admin already exists. Do you want to overwrite their credentials? (y/n) [n]: y
Client certificate life time in days [365]:
Two letter country code [US]: US
State or province name [NY]: MD
City [New York]: Columbia
Organization [Nessus Users United]: Tenable Network Security
Organizational unit [nessus-users]: nessus-admins
Email [none@none.com]: nessus-admin@example.org
--- Confirmation ---
Username: admin
Client certificate life time in days: 365
Country: US
State or province: MD
City: Columbia
Organization: Tenable Network Security
Organizational unit: nessus-admins
Email: nessus-admin@example.org
Is this ok? (y/n) [n]: y
Congratulations. Your client certificate was properly created.
The following files were created :
Nessus Client :
Certificate = /Library/Nessus/run/var/nessus/tmp/cert_admin.pem
Private key = /Library/Nessus/run/var/nessus/tmp/key_admin.pem
The certificate was successfully set for admin.
Create another cert? (y/n) [y]: n
If the user already has credentials, such as a password, this will overwrite any previous credentials and expect
the digital certificate instead. Also, updating the password of the account will remove the client certificate for
authentication.
Nessus Command Line User Management Commands
The nessuscli commands offer the ability to manage Nessus users from the command line. This includes listing the
users, changing a user’s password, adding a user, and removing a user.