---
name: "openvas-nasl"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "openvas-nasl"
version: "9.0.3-1+b1"
release: "Debian 10 (Buster)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/openvas-nasl"
---

# openvas-nasl(1)

Nessus Attack Scripting Language

## NAME

openvas-nasl - Nessus Attack Scripting Language

## SYNOPSIS

**openvas-nasl** *\<\[-vh\] \[-T tracefile\] \[-s\] \[-t target\] \[-c config\_file\] \[-d\] \[-sX\] \> files...*

## DESCRIPTION

**openvas-nasl** executes a set of NASL scripts against a given target host. It can  also be used to determine if a NASL script has any syntax errors by running it in parse (**-p**) or lint (**-L**) mode.

## OPTIONS

- **-T tracefile**

  Makes nasl write verbosely what the script does in the file *tracefile* , ala 'set -x' under sh

- **-t target**

  Apply the NASL script to *target* which may be a single host (127.0.0.1), a whole subnet (192.168.1.0/24) or several subnets (192.168.1.0/24, 192.168.243.0/24)

- **-e iface**

  Specifies the network interface to be used as the source for established connections.

- **-s**

  Sets the return value of safe\_checks() to 1. (See the OpenVAS documentation to know what the safe checks are) Implies -B.

- **-D**

  Only run the description part of the script.

- **-B**

  Runs in description mode before running the script.

- **-L**

  **Lint** the script  (run extended checks).

- **-X**

  Run the script in  **authenticated** mode. For more information see the nasl reference manual

- **-h**

  Show help

- **-v**

  Show the version of NASL.

- **-d**

  Output debug information to stderr.

- **-k key=value**

  Set KB key to vaue. Can be used multiple times.

## SEE ALSO

**The NASL2 reference manual** [**openvassd**(8)](/openvassd/8.md).

## HISTORY

NASL comes from a private project called 'pkt\_forge', which was written in late 1998 by Renaud Deraison and which was an interactive shell to forge and send raw IP packets (this pre-dates Perl's Net::RawIP by a couple of weeks). It was then extended to do a wide range of network-related operations and integrated into Nessus as 'NASL'.

The parser was completely hand-written and a pain to work with. In Mid-2002, Michel Arboi wrote a bison parser for NASL, and he and Renaud Deraison re-wrote NASL from scratch. Although the "new" NASL was nearly working as early as  August 2002, Michel's laziness made us wait for early 2003 to have it working completely.

## AUTHOR

Most of the engine is (C) 2003 Michel Arboi, most of the built-in functions are (C) 2003 Renaud Deraison