Flawed differential plugin updates caused the issue.
Tenable has advised its customers to manually update their Nessus vulnerability scanner agents, in the wake of widespread outages on December 31st.
According to Bleeping Computer, flawed differential plugin updates caused the issue, which impacted Nessus Agent versions 10.8.0 and 10.8.1. This rendered agents offline in regions including the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Tenable halted plugin updates to contain the problem and later released version 10.8.2 to address the shutdown issue.
"To fix the above issue, all Tenable Vulnerability Management and Tenable Security Center customers running Tenable Nessus Agent version 10.8.0 or 10.8.1 must either upgrade to agent version 10.8.2 or downgrade to 10.7.3," Tenable said in a statement.
"If you are using agent profiles for agent upgrades or downgrades, you must perform a separate plugin reset to recover any offline agents."
Tenable has provided a manual fix through the 10.8.2 install package, along with a reset script or a nessuscli reset command to restore functionality.
Written by
Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.
Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.
