Nikto
Category: Vulnerability Scanners
Language: Perl
Type: Server Profiler
📘 Definition & Purpose
Nikto is a classic open-source web server scanner written in Perl. It scans web servers for over 6,700 potentially dangerous files/programs, outdated server versions, and configuration issues.
🧪 Core Mechanics
Nikto queries typical index paths, analyzes HTTP header responses for security headers (e.g. missing X-Frame-Options), audits CGI directories, and brute-forces default credential logins.
🚀 Usage & Cheat Sheet
# Basic web server scan
nikto -h https://target.com
# Scan a target host and save results in HTML format
nikto -h https://target.com -ssl -o nikto_scan.html -Format htm
# Scan multiple hosts using a file list
nikto -h hosts.txt -port 80,443 -Format csv -o results.csv
🔗 Integration
This tool is utilized across the: