Vulnerability scanner Notus supports Amazon Linux

Most virtual servers in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 run a version of Linux that has been specially customised for the needs of the cloud. The latest generation of scanners from Greenbone has also been available for the Amazon Web Services operating system for a few weeks now. Over 1,900 additional, customised tests for the latest versions of Amazon Linux (Linux 2 and Linux 2023) have been integrated in recent months, explains Julio Saldana, Product Owner at Greenbone.

Significantly better performance thanks to Notus

Greenbone has been supplementing its vulnerability management with the Notus scan engine since 2022. The innovations in the architecture are primarily aimed at significantly increasing the performance of the security checks. Described as a “milestone” by Greenbone CIO Elmar Geese, the new scanner generation works in two parts: A generator queries the extensive software version data from the company’s servers and saves it in a handy Json format. Because this no longer happens at runtime, but in the background, the actual scanner (the second part of Notus) can simply read and synchronise the data from the Json files in parallel. Waiting times are eliminated. “This is much more efficient, requires fewer processes, less overhead and less memory,” explain the Greenbone developers.

Amazon Linux

Amazon Linux is a fork of Red Hat Linux sources that Amazon has been using and customising since 2011 to meet the needs of its cloud customers. It is largely binary-compatible with Red Hat, initially based on Fedora and later on CentOS. Amazon Linux was followed by Amazon Linux 2, and the latest version is now available as Amazon Linux 2023. The manufacturer plans to release a new version every two years. The version history of the official documentation also includes a feature comparison, as the differences are significant: Amazon Linux 2023 is the first version to also use Systemd, for example. Greenbone’s vulnerability scan was also available on Amazon Linux from the very beginning.