404 Error

Tenable plugin 198765 has been deprecated by Tenable and is no longer functional. The plugin page at tenable.com/plugins/nessus/198765 returns a 404 with the explicit notice: *"This plugin has been deprecated and is no longer functional."* There is no active CVE, no vulnerability description, and no affected software tied to this plugin ID in any public source. The "HIGH" severity tag you're seeing is a stale artifact carried forward in your scan policy or historical findings — it does not represent a current, actionable risk.

The apparent HIGH severity is meaningless in this context. Deprecated plugins are removed from Tenable's active feed because they were either superseded by a newer check, found to produce false positives, or covered a vulnerability that was reclassified. Your vulnerability management platform may retain historical findings from prior scans when this plugin was still active, but no new detections should fire. If you're still seeing new hits, your Nessus feed may be stale or your scan policy is pinning an old plugin set.

Why this verdict

• Deprecated plugin: Tenable's own site confirms plugin 198765 is deprecated and no longer functional — it cannot produce valid detections
• No CVE mapping: No CVE identifier is publicly associated with this plugin ID in NVD, MITRE, or Tenable's CVE cross-reference pages
• No blast radius: With no underlying vulnerability, there is no attack path, no affected software, and no role-multiplier analysis to perform — the risk is zero

Why not higher?

There is literally no vulnerability here. A deprecated plugin with no CVE, no description, and no functional detection logic cannot represent any security risk to any deployment role. Assigning any severity above IGNORE would be manufacturing risk from noise.

Why not lower?

IGNORE is already the lowest possible verdict. There is nothing below it.

1. Suppress or close findings from plugin 198765 in your vulnerability management platform — Mark all existing findings from this plugin as accepted risk or false positive. This eliminates noise from your patch queue and prevents analysts from wasting cycles triaging ghost findings.
2. Verify your Nessus plugin feed is current — If this plugin is still firing in new scans, your feed may be stale. Confirm your Nessus installation is pulling the latest plugin set from Tenable. Run nessuscli update --plugins-only on your scanner.
3. Check for a superseding plugin — In Tenable.sc or Tenable.io, search for the original plugin name or related CVE to determine if a replacement plugin exists that covers the same check with updated logic.

Run this on your Nessus scanner host as a user with access to nessuscli. Example: bash check_plugin_198765.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# check_plugin_198765.sh
# Checks whether deprecated Tenable plugin 198765 is still present/active
# Run on: Nessus scanner host
# Privileges: user with access to nessuscli or plugin directory

PLUGIN_ID="198765"
PLUGIN_DIR="/opt/nessus/lib/nessus/plugins"

# Method 1: Check plugin directory
if ls "${PLUGIN_DIR}"/*"${PLUGIN_ID}"* 2>/dev/null; then
  echo "WARNING: Plugin file for ${PLUGIN_ID} found on disk."
  echo "Your plugin feed may be stale. Run: nessuscli update --plugins-only"
  echo "VULNERABLE"
  exit 1
fi

# Method 2: Check if nessuscli can list it
if command -v /opt/nessus/sbin/nessuscli &>/dev/null; then
  FEED_DATE=$(/opt/nessus/sbin/nessuscli fix --list 2>/dev/null | grep -i 'feed_date' | head -1)
  echo "Nessus feed info: ${FEED_DATE:-unknown}"
fi

echo "Plugin ${PLUGIN_ID} is not present in the active plugin set."
echo "PATCHED"
exit 0

Sources

1. Tenable Plugin 198765 (Deprecated)
2. Tenable Plugin Database
3. Tenable Plugin Release Notes
4. Tenable Recently Updated Plugins
5. Tenable Developer - Plugin Attributes
6. Tenable Plugins Pipeline