1.1. The Nessus Architecture

Nessus is based upon a client-server model. The Nessus server, nessusd, is responsible for performing the actual vulnerability tests. The Nessus server listens for incoming connections from Nessus clients that end users use to configure and launch specific scans. Nessus clients must authenticate to the server before they are allowed to launch scans. This architecture makes it easy to administer the Nessus installations.

You can and should use NASL to write Nessus plug-ins. Another alternative is to use the C programming language, but this is strongly discouraged. C plug-ins are not as portable as NASL plug-ins, and you must recompile them for different architectures. NASL was designed to make life easier for those who want to write Nessus plug-ins, so you should use it to do so whenever possible.