Nessus

Nessus is an open source vulnerability scanner that can scan both Windows and Unix systems. It does this by using plugins that are kept up to date either from free or subscription based sources. You can get a quick idea of the kinds of things covered at http://www.nessus.org/plugins/index.php?view=all.

The actual work is done by a client that fetches the tests from a server (your server) and applies the tests to other machines. It can log in to Unix hosts (assuming an ssh key has been installed for it) to perform patch level tests etc.

The interesting thing here is how a commercial product (the commercial plugins) is blended with open source. There are GPL plugins available, but the subscription model is probably what most corporate users would go with. That's the Holy Grail of open source: have a free, open product with value, but be able to sell more value on top of it.

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