Hey Howard,
Yes OpenVAS is a security probe tool(http://www.openvas.org/).
It appears to detect the Moodle version by checking the enviroment.xml file I listed.
What you are saying does answer my question, which to summarize:
"Was my solution good to do or totally should be avoided."
I shall mention what I found to the OpenVAS side to improve the test to avoid false positives.
Thanks for clarification.