Month: 2026-05 — Summary of key developer work and impact. Key features delivered: - Enhancement to feed synchronization in greenbone/openvas-scanner by ensuring cached_hashes are used when the integrity check is disabled, preventing unnecessary feed updates. Major bugs fixed: - Feed Synchronization: Fixed a bug where disabling the integrity check caused cached_hashes() to return None, leading to feed updates on every scheduler run. Removed the integrity check condition to ensure cached hashes are used correctly and feeds are not updated redundantly. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Improved feed synchronization efficiency, reducing network traffic and scheduler churn. - More predictable scan behavior and reduced overhead during feed updates, contributing to higher scanner reliability. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Cache handling and conditional logic in the OpenVAS scanner codebase. - Bug diagnosis and fix traceability with commit fc76997f106b9961dc9f09ceb5f7652072cb708e and referenced issues SC-1597 and #2209. - Maintained code quality and alignment with repository standards in greenbone/openvas-scanner.

April 2026 — Performance summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Delivered key features, security hardening, and developer tooling improvements across the scanner stack, driving better usability, security, and maintainability. Notable outcomes include: improved version visibility and user awareness at startup, improved container image handling with OCIIndex support, enhanced NASL scripting with IP reverse lookup, hardened cryptographic backend defaults for scanning, and strengthened development tooling and docs to speed onboarding and reduce build friction. These work items reduce troubleshooting time, improve security posture, and enable smoother CI/CD and contributor activity.

During March 2026, the team delivered meaningful, business-focused improvements across the OpenVAS scanner and its core libraries, with a clear emphasis on IPv6 readiness, cross-platform reliability, and streamlined release processes. The work enhances scanning coverage, robustness, and operational efficiency for customers with diverse networks and deployment models. Key features delivered: - OpenVAS Scanner: cross-platform compilation fixes and NASL const preservation by reverting problematic changes and duplicating name strings to maintain const-ness; IPv6 alive test methods and large-network host discovery; and documentation improvements to support conventional commits and automated releases. - GVM Llibs: IPv6 host discovery enhancements with CIDR handling, ICMPv6 reply capture, improved alive-detection output, compatibility shims, and stability-focused tests. Major bugs fixed: - Resolved i386/armhf compilation issues in openvas-scanner by reverting changes and preserving NASL const qualifiers; addressed a root cause that caused compilation failures. - Fixed resource and test stability issues in gvm-libs related to IPv6 discovery flow (leak/close socket fixes and unit test adjustments). Overall impact and accomplishments: - Expanded IPv6 scanning capabilities, enabling more reliable discovery in large IPv6 networks and improved detection accuracy, directly increasing coverage and reducing manual work for operators. - Strengthened release and documentation practices, enabling smoother, more predictable releases and better contributor guidance. - Improved code quality and test reliability across the stack, reducing risk of regressions in future releases. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - C/C++, network programming (ICMPv6), IPv6 CIDR handling, and host discovery workflows. - Test automation, unit testing, and stability hardening. - Documentation discipline and conventional-commit-based release labeling.

February 2026 monthly summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Focused on stability, security, and maintainability improvements across the scanner backend, with notable/testing enhancements and a key bug fix that reduces runtime risk. Delivered feature parity and backend flexibility while upgrading security-related dependencies and improving documentation to support faster onboarding and fewer support tickets.

January 2026 Monthly Summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Focused on delivering flexible scanning capabilities and stabilizing rs-notus behavior to improve reliability and value of automated security scans. Key business value includes more adaptable scan configurations, reduced risk of scanner crashes, and stronger resilience when feeds are incomplete or legacy. Delivered capabilities and stability improvements across 2026-01: - Implemented Scanner Configuration Enhancement and Flexible Scanning for the scannerctl workflow, enabling full-feed translation, exclusion rules for families and OIDs, support for scan preferences, and scanning without a selector (all_selector) for full/fast modes. - Improved scan preferences handling to ensure user and feed-derived preferences are respected during configuration and scanning workflows. - Fixed segmentation fault and memory leak in rs-notus when no advisories are present, addressing stability issues under older feeds and table-driven scenarios.

December 2025 monthly summary for the openvas-scanner and related repositories. Focused on delivering high-value user features, stabilizing core scanning/processing pipelines, and strengthening compliance signals. Key feature deliveries improved usability and reliability, while targeted bug fixes addressed memory stability and API correctness. This period also demonstrated strong coding discipline in NASL tooling, raw IP utilities, and licensing automation, translating into measurable business value.

2025-11 monthly summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner focusing on stability, compatibility, and observability improvements. Delivered key NASL compatibility and interpreter enhancements, improved per-host scan visibility, and harder robust configuration handling to reduce crashes and support longer-term operational metrics.

October 2025 monthly summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner: Focused on strengthening NASL execution, expanding discovery capabilities, and improving feed-filter reliability to enhance scanning accuracy and resilience. Implemented robust feed-filter script inclusion using the search_path crate, hardened NASL interpreter handling of undefined variables and increment operations, extended NASL service discovery with TLS support and SSH banner detection, and added SNMP GET/GETNEXT capabilities (v1/v2c/v3) with Rust-based implementations. These changes improve service identification accuracy, reduce false negatives, and enable broader asset discovery for customers with complex networks.

September 2025: Delivered a focused set of core improvements across greenbone/openvas-scanner and greenbone/actions to boost scanning reliability, security, and developer velocity. Key features and enhancements include TLS NASL socket operations to strengthen network scanning, a smoke testing framework with API endpoint QA for core capabilities, and API response alignment for FullScanPreferences to ensure stable client contracts. Additionally, critical Rust dependency upgrades, NASL built-ins for file type script preferences, and targeted bug fixes improved efficiency, compatibility, and safety. The work supports faster, more reliable scans, fewer API regressions, and stronger license/compliance handling in automation. Top 3-5 achievements: - TLS/NASL TLS socket operations for network scanning introduced (commit f2b7b44b5a0b72bf4424e62113f9ab3bd134feeb). - Smoke testing framework and API endpoint QA added (commit bcba4f0a6b1982a836449fb2c31ceebcec8f5530). - API response alignment for FullScanPreferences to ensure serialized API responses match the expected format (commit 910a97954e91fe0c22ce6bcf2c23906e0f416571). - Rust dependency upgrades for russh, redis, rand, and generic-array to improve security and compatibility (commits e4e2842cbba61dc77cd1d9bdbff856221e95340d and fbac3729b656463f1e5fb9b4c852ed766d2490ce). - NASL built-ins for file type script preferences and safety checks added (commit 16d553cc53c9328e854e45d8a0382d34fdea7db8).

August 2025 monthly summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Key work: Enhanced Alive Test with support for ICMPv6, TCP SYN/ACK, ARP, and Neighbor Discovery, with refactoring of packet sending into common modules to improve maintainability and readability. Fixed a post-merge NaslValue handling regression in insert_hexzeros, ensuring correct processing of NaslValue::Data and NaslValue::String. Updated scanner preferences documentation to describe and clarify options, including new and undocumented preferences. Impact: stronger host detection accuracy and robustness, reduced regression risk, and clearer configuration guidance for operators. Technologies/skills demonstrated: network protocol probing, code refactoring for shared modules, Nasl scripting value handling, and documentation practices across the repository. Commits addressed: 7e08f4ee6cfdbad0431b0f995fd6fba7481ad03a; d593dcc5290607e85880d05198a71f556144a45c; 86faa0eb7b14f5d60329e22cf77b28974766b838.

July 2025 monthly summary for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Focused on stability, configurability, and NASL runtime extensibility. Delivered dynamic MTU calculation for nasl-builtin-raw-ip using the mtu crate; added Knowledge Base (KB) items support in scannerctl CLI; implemented Rust-based HTTP NASL builtins (HTTP/1, HTTP/2) with scan integrations; introduced ScanPrefs for centralized scan configuration and global timeout defaults; resolved a critical crash risk by adding null handling for current_vhost in plug_current_vhost. These changes improve scan performance, reliability, and operational configurability for enterprise deployments.

June 2025 monthly highlights for greenbone/openvas-scanner. Focused on expanding NASL capabilities, stabilizing dependencies, and improving API usability and maintainability to boost scanning reliability and developer productivity.

May 2025 monthly summary: Focused on reliability, data integrity, and developer productivity across the scanner stack. Delivered features that enable configurable workflows and testing flexibility, and resolved high-severity bugs to improve user experience, data freshness, and observability. The work spanned openvas-scanner, gvmd, and gvm-libs with emphasis on stability, correctness, and measurable business value.

April 2025: Focused on expanding NASL scripting capabilities, improving scanner stability, and aligning parsing with the latest Rust tooling. Delivered two NASL builtins in Rust for private key handling, added a new NASL script_get_preference() to improve script configurability, and fixed several stability and data integrity issues. All work was complemented by documentation updates and usage examples to accelerate adoption and reduce operational risk.

March 2025 performance summary: Delivered substantial feature improvements and reliability enhancements across the OpenVAS ecosystem. Key features include IPv6 packet forging in NASL with robust error handling, a health/performance metrics endpoint, and OpenVASd scanner integration with cross-scanner performance data retrieval. The work also delivered a new OpenVAS performance metrics API in gvm-libs, enabling streamlined access to performance data and simplified parsing utilities. In addition, several stability and correctness fixes improved reliability: boolean preferences mapping for OpenVASd, and safeguards against segmentation faults/double-frees in OpenVASd request handling to improve stability.

February 2025 monthly summary focused on delivering reliable core capabilities, improving testability, and advancing exploratory features across two main repositories. Highlights include stabilizing OpenVAS scan progress reporting in gvm-libs, introducing and refactoring NASL raw IP functionality in openvas-scanner, and progressing a Rust-based Alive Test PoC, alongside cleanup of NASL initialization to reduce API surface and maintenance burden.

2025-01 performance summary across greenbone/openvas-scanner and greenbone/gvm-libs. Delivered observable improvements in scan observability, logging accuracy, and data robustness. Highlights include new Script Run Duration Logging with JSON reporting and gated logging, a bug fix for OSP scannerctl logging identifiers, and a robust, test-covered parsing of scan status data.

December 2024: OpenVAS Scanner delivered notable feature enhancements and stability improvements. Key work includes NASL host information and discovery, comprehensive IPv6 packet forging support, a new authenticated scans configuration option, and expanded test coverage for raw_ip and packet forging. A critical memory-management bug was resolved by ensuring the files hash table is destroyed exactly once, improving scanner reliability in long-running operations. These efforts strengthen host discovery accuracy, broaden security testing capabilities for IPv6, and streamline scan configuration, delivering measurable business value in risk assessment speed and reliability.

Month: 2024-11 — concise monthly summary focusing on business value and technical achievements across gvm-libs and openvas-scanner. Delivered new API integration library, enhanced vulnerability reporting, and strengthened test reliability, enabling more accurate data, faster incident response, and healthier CI feedback loops.

Month: 2024-10 — Key accomplishments: Delivered RC4 cipher support for NASL scripting in greenbone/openvas-scanner, enabling encryption/decryption, dependencies, and cipher handler management to secure NASL data handling. This work enhances data security within the NASL environment and lays groundwork for future cryptographic capabilities. All changes were implemented with code review and testing to ensure compatibility with existing NASL workflows and repository stability. No documented user-facing regressions in this period.