Introduction

WhatWeb identifies websites. Its goal is to answer the question, “What is that Website?”. WhatWeb recognizes web technologies including content management systems (CMS), blogging platforms, statistic/analytics packages, JavaScript libraries, web servers, and embedded devices. WhatWeb has over 900 plugins, each to recognize something different. WhatWeb also identifies version numbers, email addresses, account IDs, web framework modules, SQL errors, and more.

WhatWeb can be stealthy and fast, or thorough but slow. WhatWeb supports an aggression level to control the trade off between speed and reliability. When you visit a website in your browser, the transaction includes many hints of what web technologies are powering that website. Sometimes a single webpage visit contains enough information to identify a website but when it does not, WhatWeb can interrogate the website further. The default level of aggression, called ‘passive’, is the fastest and requires only one HTTP request of a website. This is suitable for scanning public websites. More aggressive modes were developed for in penetration tests.

Most WhatWeb plugins are thorough and recognize a range of cues from subtle to obvious. For example, most WordPress websites can be identified by the meta HTML tag, e.g. ‘‘, but a minority of WordPress websites remove this identifying tag but this does not thwart WhatWeb. The WordPress WhatWeb plugin has over 15 tests, which include checking the favicon, default installation files, login pages, and checking for “/wp-content/” within relative links.

Features:

Over 900 plugins

Control the trade off between speed/stealth and reliability

Plugins include example URLs

Performance tuning. Control how many websites to scan concurrently.

Multiple log formats: Brief (greppable), Verbose (human readable), XML, JSON, MagicTree, RubyObject, MongoDB.

Recursive web spidering

Proxy support including TOR

Custom HTTP headers

Basic HTTP authentication

Control over webpage redirection

Nmap-style IP ranges

Fuzzy matching

Result certainty awareness

Custom plugins defined on the command line

Example Usage

Using WhatWeb on a couple of websites:

Using a higher aggression level to identify the version of Joomla in use.

Help Output:

WhatWeb – Next generation web scanner. Version 0.4.7 by Andrew Horton aka urbanadventurer from Security-Assessment.com Homepage: http://www.morningstarsecurity.com/research/whatweb Usage: whatweb [options] TARGET SELECTION: Enter URLs, filenames or nmap-format IP ranges. Use /dev/stdin to pipe HTML directly –input-file=FILE, -i Identify URLs found in FILE, eg. -i /dev/stdin –url-prefix Add a prefix to target URLs –url-suffix Add a suffix to target URLs –url-pattern Insert the targets into a URL. Requires –input-file, eg. www.example.com/%insert%/robots.txt –example-urls, -e Add example URLs for each selected plugin to the target list. By default will add example URLs for all plugins. AGGRESSION LEVELS: –aggression, -a=LEVEL The aggression level controls the trade-off between speed/stealth and reliability. Default: 1 Aggression levels are: 1 (Passive) Make one HTTP request per target. Except for redirects. 2 (Polite) Reserved for future use 3 (Aggressive) Triggers aggressive plugin functions only when a plugin matches passively. 4 (Heavy) Trigger aggressive functions for all plugins. Guess a lot of URLs like Nikto. HTTP OPTIONS: –user-agent, -U=AGENT Identify as AGENT instead of WhatWeb/0.4.7. –user, -u= HTTP basic authentication –header, -H Add an HTTP header. eg “Foo:Bar”. Specifying a default header will replace it. Specifying an empty value, eg. “User-Agent:” will remove the header. –follow-redirect=WHEN Control when to follow redirects. WHEN may be `never’, `http-only’, `meta-only’, `same-site’, `same-domain’ or `always’. Default: always –max-redirects=NUM Maximum number of contiguous redirects. Default: 10 SPIDERING: –recursion, -r Follow links recursively. Only follow links under the path Default: off –depth, -d Maximum recursion depth. Default: 10 –max-links, -m Maximum number of links to follow on one page Default: 250 –spider-skip-extensions Redefine extensions to skip. Default: zip,gz,tar,jpg,exe,png,pdf PROXY: –proxy Set proxy hostname and port Default: 8080 –proxy-user Set proxy user and password PLUGINS: –plugins, -p Comma delimited set of selected plugins. Default is all. Each element can be a directory, file or plugin name and can optionally have a modifier, eg. + or – Examples: +/tmp/moo.rb,+/tmp/foo.rb title,md5,+./plugins-disabled/ ./plugins-disabled,-md5 -p + is a shortcut for -p +plugins-disabled –list-plugins, -l List the plugins –info-plugins, -I Display information for all plugins. Optionally search with keywords in a comma delimited list. –custom-plugin Define a custom plugin called Custom-Plugin, Examples: “:text=>’powered by abc'” “:regexp=>/powered[ ]?by ab[0-9]/” “:ghdb=>’intitle:abc \”powered by abc\”‘” “:md5=>’8666257030b94d3bdb46e05945f60b42′” “{:text=>’powered by abc’},{:regexp=>/abc [ ]?1/i}” LOGGING & OUTPUT: –verbose, -v Increase verbosity, use twice for plugin development. –colour,–color=WHEN control whether colour is used. WHEN may be `never’, `always’, or `auto’ –quiet, -qDo not display brief logging to STDOUT –log-brief=FILE Log brief, one-line output –log-verbose=FILE Log verbose output –log-xml=FILE Log XML format –log-json=FILE Log JSON format –log-json-verbose=FILE Log JSON Verbose format –log-magictree=FILE Log MagicTree XML format –log-object=FILE Log Ruby object inspection format –log-mongo-database Name of the MongoDB database –log-mongo-collection Name of the MongoDB collection. Default: whatweb –log-mongo-host MongoDB hostname or IP address. Default: 0.0.0.0 –log-mongo-username MongoDB username. Default: nil –log-mongo-password MongoDB password. Default: nil –log-errors=FILE Log errors PERFORMANCE & STABILITY: –max-threads, -t Number of simultaneous threads. Default: 25. –open-timeout Time in seconds. Default: 15 –read-timeout Time in seconds. Default: 30 –wait=SECONDS Wait SECONDS between connections This is useful when using a single thread. HELP & MISCELLANEOUS: –help, -h This help –debug Raise errors in plugins –version Display version information. (WhatWeb 0.4.7) EXAMPLE USAGE: whatweb example.com whatweb -v example.com whatweb -a 3 example.com whatweb 192.168.1.0/24

Logging & Output

Verbose output is specified with -v

The following types of logging are supported:

–log-brief=FILEBrief, one-line, greppable format

–log-verbose=FILEVerbose

–log-xml=FILE XML format. XSL stylesheet is provided

–log-json=FILE JSON format

–log-json-verbose=FILEJSON verbose format

–log-magictree=FILEMagicTree XML format

–log-object=FILERuby object inspection format

–log-mongo-databaseName of the MongoDB database

–log-mongo-collectionName of the MongoDB collection. Default: whatweb

–log-mongo-hostMongoDB hostname or IP address. Default: 0.0.0.0

–log-mongo-usernameMongoDB username. Default: nil

–log-mongo-passwordMongoDB password. Default: nil

–log-errors=FILELog errors. This is usually printed to the screen in red.

You can output to multiple logs simultaneously by specifying multiple command line logging options.

Plugins

Matches are made with:

Text strings (case sensitive)

Regular expressions

Google Hack Database queries (limited set of keywords)

MD5 hashes

URL recognition

HTML tag patterns

Custom ruby code for passive and aggressive operations

$ ./whatweb -l

WhatWeb Plugin List Plugin Name Description —————————————— 1024-CMS 1024 is one of a few CMS’s leading the way with the i 360-Web-Manager 360-Web-Manager – homepage: http://www.360webmanager. 4images 4images is a powerful web-based image gallery managem … (truncated – there are a lot)

To view more detail about a plugin or plugins

$ ./whatweb -I phpBB

WhatWeb Plugin Information Searching for phpBB —————————————- Plugin Name Details phpBB Author: Andrew Horton Version: 0.3 Examples: 16 Matches: 7 Passive function: Yes Aggressive function: Yes Version detection: Yes Description: phpBB is a free forum phpbb.org ————————————————- 1 plugins found All plugins are loaded by default.

Plugins can be selected by directories, files or plugin names as a comma delimited list with the -p or –plugin command line option.

Each list item may have a modifier: + adds to the full set, – removes from the full set and no modifier overrides the defaults.

Examples :

–plugins +plugins-disabled,-foobar

–plugins +/tmp/moo.rb

–plugins foobar (only select foobar)

-p title,md5,+./plugins-disabled/

-p ./plugins-disabled,-md5

Aggressive Plugins

WhatWeb features several levels of aggression. By default the aggression level is set to 1 (passive) which sends a single HTTP GET request.

(Passive)Make one HTTP request per target. Except for redirects. (Polite)Reserved for future use (Aggressive)Triggers aggressive plugin functions only when a plugin matches passively. (Heavy)Trigger aggressive functions for all plugins. Guess a lot of URLs like Nikto.

If aggression is enabled the aggressive plugins will guess more URLs and perform actions that are potentially unsuitable without permission.

With the passive matches we know that smartor.is-root.com/forum/ is running phpBB version 2:

$ ./whatweb smartor.is-root.com/forum/

http://smartor.is-root.com/forum/ [200] PasswordField[password], HTTPServer[Apache/2.2.15], PoweredBy[phpBB], Apache[2.2.15], IP[88.198.177.36], phpBB[2], PHP[5.2.13], test[Smartors Mods Forums – Reloaded], X-Powered-By[PHP/5.2.13], Cookies[phpbb2mysql_data,phpbb2mysql_sid], Title[Smartors Mods Forums – Reloaded], Country[GERMANY][DE]

With the aggressive matches in the phpBB plugin we know that the same website is running phpBB version 2.0.20 or higher:

$ ./whatweb -p plugins/phpbb.rb -a 3 smartor.is-root.com/forum/

http://smartor.is-root.com/forum/ [200] phpBB[2,>2.0.20]

Note: the use of the -p argument to select only the phpBB plugin. It is advisable, but not mandatory, to select a specific plugin when attempting to fingerprint software versions in aggressive mode. This approach is far more stealthy as it will limit the number of requests.

Do not use aggressive plugins with recursive site crawling. WhatWeb has no understanding of a website, instead it currently treats each URL separately.

It also has no caching so if you use aggressive plugins with recursion you will fetch the same files multiple times. The same is true for aggressive modes on redirecting URLs.

Recursive Spider

The recursion option is used to scan some or all of a website with WhatWeb. Recursive spidering will follow each link on a webpage if it is within the same website, then repeat the process on the followed pages.

The configurable settings for recursive spidering are:

–recursion, -r Follow links recursively. Only follows links under the path (default: off)

–depth, -d Maximum recursion depth (default: 10)

–max-links, -m Maximum number of links to follow on one page (default: 250)

–spider-skip-extensions Redefine extensions to skip. (Default: zip,gz,tar,jpg,exe,png,pdf)

Limitations of the spidering: This follows links in <a> tags, these are the HTML tags designed specifically for links. The spider does not obtain URLs from other sources. Some good choices for future improvement are image tags, e.g. <img src=”/images/boats.jpg”>, form tags, e.g. <form action=”/vote.php”>, URL paths in CSS files, etc.

The spider is provided by Anemone, a third party ruby gem. It doesn’t follow redirects. For example the URL treshna.com will fail and www.treshna.com will produce results.

Performance & Stability

WhatWeb features several options to increase performance and stability.

–max-threads, -t Number of simultaneous threads. Default: 25.

–open-timeout Time in seconds. Default: 60

–read-timeout Time in seconds. Default: 120

–wait=SECONDS Wait SECONDS between connections

This is useful when using a single thread.

The –wait and –max-threads commands can be used to assist in IDS evasion.

Furthermore, changing the user-agent using the -U or –user-agent command line option will avoid the Snort IDS rule for WhatWeb.

Without the em-resolve-replace gem performance is significantly degraded.

If you are scanning ranges of IP addresses, it is much more efficient to use a port scanner like nmap to discover which have port 80 open before scanning with WhatWeb.

Character set detection, with the Charset plugin, required by JSON and MongoDB logging uses more CPU than otherwise.

Optional Dependencies

Without the em-resolve-replace gem performance is significantly degraded. gem install em-resolv-replace

To enable JSON logging install the json gem. gem install json

gem install bson_ext

To enable MongoDB logging install the mongo gem. gem install mongo

To enable character set detection and MongoDB logging install the rchardet gem. gem install rchardet



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