Can you import Nmap scan results in Nessus to get possibly better results from a Nessus Scan?

• Actually, some older versions of Nessus offered a feature that allowed results from an Nmap scan to be imported for reference in vulnerability scans.

• But unfortunately this feature is no longer supported in the newer versions of Nessus.

So... Yeah, that's what the truth is.

BUT IS IT REALLY THAT "UNFORTUNATE" ?

• Well, honestly, even when this feature was available in Nessus, there was hardly any difference (if, at all) in the Nessus Scan results with and without importing the nmap results.

Many years back,

• Nessus used to perform its own host discovery checks and port scans before performing its vulnerability checks, which it still continues to do.

• But nmap was considered a faster (and better) port scanner than Nessus's in-built scanners.

• So, people used to do the scan quickly using nmap and then import the nmap results in Nessus.

• Then, Nessus would use this nmap result in place of its "Nessus in-built port scanner" and directly start performing its vulnerability checks.

• This (kind-of) decreased the amount of time to perform a Nessus scan, and reduced the amount of port scanning traffic being sent on the network.

But with time, Nessus in-built port scanner improved so much that the need for importing nmap results pretty much got finished.

So, that feature was not needed any more. Thus, it got removed from Nessus. Nowadays, Nessus works like a charm even without using Nmap Results. Happy Ending :)

I hope this article was informative,

See you in the next lecture,

~ Avinash Yadav