whatweb

name	whatweb
description	Web scanner that identifies websites, CMS, frameworks, web servers, and embedded devices

WhatWeb Scanner

Next generation web scanner that identifies websites and detects web technologies, CMS platforms, JavaScript libraries, web servers, and embedded devices.

Homepage: https://morningstarsecurity.com/research/whatweb

Usage

Basic scan:

enact run enact/scanner/whatweb:retrieve -a '{"url": "https://github.com"}'

Aggressive scan with verbose output:

enact run enact/scanner/whatweb:scan -a '{"url": "https://example.com", "aggression": 3, "verbose": true}'

Custom plugins and user agent:

enact run enact/scanner/whatweb -a '{"url": "https://example.com", "plugins": "title,md5,wordpress", "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0"}'

High-performance scan:

enact run enact/scanner/whatweb -a '{"url": "https://example.com", "no_cookies": true, "no_errors": true, "max_threads": 50}'

Aggression Levels

• 1 (Stealthy): Makes one HTTP request per target. Follows redirects. Default and recommended.
• 3 (Aggressive): If a level 1 plugin matches, additional requests are made for confirmation.
• 4 (Heavy): Makes many HTTP requests per target. All aggressive tests from all plugins are used.

What It Detects

WhatWeb recognizes hundreds of web technologies including:

• CMS platforms: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.
• Web frameworks: Rails, Django, Laravel, etc.
• JavaScript libraries: jQuery, React, Angular, etc.
• Web servers: Apache, Nginx, IIS, etc.
• Analytics tools: Google Analytics, etc.
• Programming languages: PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.
• CDNs: Cloudflare, Akamai, etc.

Parameters

• url (required): Target URL, hostname, or IP address
• aggression (default: 1): Controls speed/stealth vs reliability trade-off (1, 3, or 4)
• verbose (default: false): Include detailed plugin descriptions in output
• user_agent (default: ""): Custom User-Agent string for requests
• plugins (default: ""): Specific plugins to use (comma-separated, empty = all)
• no_errors (default: false): Suppress error messages for cleaner output
• max_threads (default: 25): Number of concurrent threads
• no_cookies (default: false): Disable cookie handling for better performance with high thread counts
• output_format (default: "json"): Return format - json or text

Example Output

{
  "target": "https://github.com",
  "http_status": 200,
  "plugins": {
    "HTTPServer": ["GitHub.com"],
    "Title": ["GitHub: Let's build from here"],
    "HTML5": {},
    "Script": ["application/json", "text/javascript"]
  }
}