## About WhatWeb 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 1800 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 'stealthy', 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 use 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 1800 plugins - Control the trade off between speed/stealth and reliability - Performance tuning. Control how many websites to scan concurrently. - Multiple log formats: Brief (greppable), Verbose (human readable), XML, JSON, MagicTree, RubyObject, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, SQL. - Proxy support including TOR - Custom HTTP headers - Basic HTTP authentication - Control over webpage redirection - IP address ranges - Fuzzy matching - Result certainty awareness - Custom plugins defined on the command line - IDN (International Domain Name) support *** ## Example Usage Using WhatWeb to scan `reddit.com`. ```shell $ ./whatweb reddit.com http://reddit.com [301 Moved Permanently] Country[UNITED STATES][US], HTTPServer[snooserv], IP[151.101.65.140], RedirectLocation[https://www.reddit.com/], UncommonHeaders[retry-after,x-served-by,x-cache-hits,x-timer], Via-Proxy[1.1 varnish] https://www.reddit.com/ [200 OK] Cookies[edgebucket,eu_cookie_v2,loid,rabt,rseor3,session_tracker,token], Country[UNITED STATES][US], Email[[email protected],[email protected]], Frame, HTML5, HTTPServer[snooserv], HttpOnly[token], IP[151.101.37.140], Open-Graph-Protocol[website], Script[text/javascript], Strict-Transport-Security[max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains; preload], Title[reddit: the front page of the internet], UncommonHeaders[fastly-restarts,x-served-by,x-cache-hits,x-timer], Via-Proxy[1.1 varnish], X-Frame-Options[SAMEORIGIN] ``` *** ## Logging & Output The following types of logging are supported: - `--log-brief`=FILE Brief, one-line, greppable format - `--log-verbose`=FILE Verbose - `--log-xml=`FILE XML format. XSL stylesheet is provided - `--log-json=`FILE JSON format - `--log-json-verbose`=FILE JSON verbose format - `--log-magictree`=FILE MagicTree XML format - `--log-object`=FILE 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-elastic-index` Name of the index to store results. Default: whatweb - `--log-elastic-host` Host:port of the elastic http interface. Default: 127.0.0.1:9200 - `--log-errors`=FILE Log errors. This is usually printed to the screen in red. You can output to multiple logs simultaneously by specifying multiple command line logging options. Advanced users who want SQL output should read the source code to see unsupported features. *** ## 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 To list the plugins supported: ``` $ ./whatweb -l ``` ### WhatWeb Plugin List ``` Plugin Name - Description 1024-CMS - 1024 is one of a few CMS's leading the way with the implementation... 360-Web-Manager - 360-Web-Manager 3COM-NBX - 3COM NBX phone system. The NBX NetSet utility is a web interface i... 3dcart - 3dcart - The 3dcart Shopping Cart Software is a complete ecommerce s... 4D - 4D web application deployment server 4images - 4images is a powerful web-based image gallery management system. Fe... ... (truncated) ``` ### Search Plugins To view more detail about a plugin or search plugins for a keyword: ```shell $ ./whatweb -I phpBB WhatWeb Detailed Plugin List Searching for phpBB ================================================================================ Plugin: phpBB -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description: phpBB is a free forum Website: http://phpbb.org/ Author: Andrew Horton Version: 0.3 Features: [Yes] Pattern Matching (7) [Yes] Version detection from pattern matching [Yes] Function for passive matches [Yes] Function for aggressive matches [Yes] Google Dorks (1) Google Dorks: [1] "Powered by phpBB" ================================================================================ ``` ### Plugin Selection 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 The `--dorks` command line option returns google dorks for the selected plugin. For example, `--dorks` wordpress returns "is proudly powered by WordPress" The `--grep`, `-g` command line option searches the target page for the selected string and returns a match in a plugin called Grep if it is found. ## Aggression WhatWeb features several levels of aggression. By default the aggression level is set to 1 (stealthy) which sends a single HTTP GET request and also follows redirects. ```shell --aggression, -a 1. Stealthy Makes one HTTP request per target. Also follows redirects. 2. Unused 3. Aggressive Can make a handful of HTTP requests per target. This triggers aggressive plugins for targets only when those plugins are identified with a level 1 request first. 4. Heavy Makes a lot of HTTP requests per target. Aggressive tests from all plugins are used for all URLs. ``` Level 3 aggressive plugins will guess more URLs and perform actions that are potentially unsuitable without permission. WhatWeb currently does not support any intrusion/exploit level tests in plugins. ### An example of the different results between level 1 and level 3: A level 1, stealthy scan identifies that smartor.is-root.com/forum/ uses phpBB version 2: ```shell $ ./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], X-Powered-By[PHP/5.2.13], Cookies[phpbb2mysql_data,phpbb2mysql_sid], Title[Smartors Mods Forums - Reloaded], Country[GERMANY][DE] ``` A level 3, aggressive scan triggers additional tests in the phpBB plugin which identifies that the website uses phpBB version 2.0.20 or higher: ```shell $ ./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. WhatWeb has no caching so if you use aggressive plugins on redirecting URLs you may fetch the same files multiple times.