OVALdi, also named the OVAL Interpreter, is an open-source tool developed by MITRE to demonstrate how the OVAL language may be used to scan a computer for vulnerabilities. This article provides a few hints about how to use this tool.
For now OVALdi is only a command-line tool with very limited documentation.
It is recommended to update the XML file containing vulnerability check definitions every time you run the tool:
Open a shell or CMD window, go to the ovaldi folder, then run the following command (using the XML file name you have just downloaded):
ovaldi.exe -m -o windows.xml |
The scanner will first validate the XML data according to the OVAL language schema, this can take a long time so be patient. At this stage, it may stop with an error message. This is usually due to a new version of the OVAL language which is not supported by the installed ovaldi version. In this case, just download a new ovaldi version to upgrade it.
At the end of the scanning process (which may take 5-10 minutes), several result files will be produced. Open the file results.html to look at results.
OVALdi is open-source and still under heavy development, so the results may not always be accurate: