Introduction

Vuls is an open-source vulnerability scanner for Linux, designed to help administrators identify vulnerabilities in their systems. This guide will walk you through the steps to install and use Vuls on a Windows VPS.

Prerequisites

• A Windows VPS with administrative access. You can consider using a provider like NetCloud24.
• Windows 10/11 or Windows Server 2016/2019.
• Install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) if you don’t have it set up already. This allows you to run a Linux environment directly on your Windows system.

Step 1: Enable WSL on Windows

If you haven’t enabled WSL yet, follow these steps:

1. Open PowerShell as an administrator and run:

wsl --install

1. Restart your machine if prompted.
2. After restarting, you may need to choose and install a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Store (e.g., Ubuntu).

Step 2: Install Required Packages

Once you have a Linux distribution installed, open it through the Start menu. You’ll need to install a few packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y git curl

Step 3: Install Go

Vuls is written in Go, so we need to install it:

wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.19.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.19.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz
echo "export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Step 4: Download and Install Vuls

Now you can download and install Vuls:

go install github.com/future-architect/vuls/cmd/vuls@latest

Step 5: Configure Vuls

Vuls requires configuration. Create a configuration file:

mkdir ~/.vuls
nano ~/.vuls/config.toml

Enter the following configuration in the config.toml file:

[servers]
  [servers.server1]
  host = "localhost"
  user = "your-username"
  password = "your-password"
  port = 22
  type = "ssh"

Replace your-username and your-password with the actual SSH user credentials for the server you want to scan.

Step 6: Run Vulnerability Scan

To initiate the vulnerability scan, run:

vuls scan

Step 7: Check Scan Results

After the scan completes, you can view the results by running:

vuls report

Conclusion

You have successfully installed and configured the Vuls Vulnerability Scanner on your Windows VPS! You can now use it to scan systems for vulnerabilities regularly.

Resources

• Vuls Official GitHub Repository
• Windows Subsystem for Linux Documentation