Vulnerabilities Database by OpenVAS

Question

Does OpenVAS make use of a Vulnerability Database to detect vulnerabilities? Which one does it use if it does?

Answer 1

You can view the Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) here or here, the majority of these will be downloaded as .nasl files (Nessus Attack Scripting Language).

To see exactly what they test against or to edit them the simplest way to install OpenVAS and update it, then look at the code for each of the .nasl files in the filesystem.

By default these can be found at /var/lib/openvas/plugins