nikto

Nikto is a Perl script for testing web sites. It's useful, though there are more than a few things that are annoying about it. First is its dependence on other modules: I know, I know, I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon but I really dislike having to go track down stuff. I understand that sometimes the other modules are really, really necessary and I certainly don't expect someone to reinvent the wheel just to avoid this, but far to often it's just plain laziness - that probably doesn't apply here, I'm just grumbling in general..

Anyway, once you've satisfied its dependencies, update, and then just turn it loose on your site:

nikto.pl -update
nikto.pl -host localhost -output /tmp/problems
 

That will display its progress on the screen as well as logging it to /tmp/problems for later review.

Nikto knows about a LOT of potential secuity problems. Unfortunately, if you have Custom 404 redirects in place, Nikto thinks you have each and every problem it knows about. It effectively tells you that early on:

+ Server does not respond with '404' for error messages (uses '301').
+     This may increase false-positives.
 

That also confuses it terribly with TRACE, which apparently should be disabled (http://www.cgisecurity.com/whitehat-mirror/WhitePaper_screen.pdf). But if the disable pushes it to a custom error page, Nikto thinks it's still enabled.

The obvious solution is to shut off custom error handling while testing with Nikto. That may be annoying, but the tests don't take all that long to run. Or, you can leave it as is and manually review the output, ignoring warnings due to that misunderstanding.

Comments?

More Articles by Tony Lawrence - Find me on Google+

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.