Nikto – The Hacker’s Chosen Cybersecurity Tool -

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Nikto – The Hacker’s Chosen Cybersecurity Tool

Nikto is a highly effective open-source web server scanner that is extensively employed in the fields of penetration testing and cybersecurity. Nikto, which was designed to detect potential security issues and vulnerabilities in web servers, conducts exhaustive evaluations by probing for known flaws, misconfigurations, and obsolete software.

With its ability to facilitate both manual and automated testing, this tool offers security professionals a flexible solution to assess the security stance of web servers. Nikto possesses an extensive repository of recognized vulnerabilities, which enables it to identify a wide array of concerns such as obsolete server software, exposed sensitive files, and potential security hazards.

In addition, Nikto possesses the capability to produce comprehensive reports and seamlessly integrate with additional security tools, rendering it an invaluable resource for ethical hackers and security analysts who aim to strengthen the security of online systems and web server defenses. Active community support, regular updates, and user-friendliness all contribute to its prominence in the cybersecurity community.

#Nikto Flags

-help	This help information
-host+	Target host/URL
-id+	Host authentication to use, format is id:pass or id:pass:realm
-ipv4	IPv4 Only
-ipv6	IPv6 Only
-list-plugins	List all available plugins, perform no
-mutate+	Guess additional file names:
-mutate-options	Provide information for mutates
-nointeractive	Disables interactive features
-nolookup	Disables DNS lookups
-nossl	Disables the use of SSL
-noslash	Strip trailing slash from URL (e.g., ‘/admin/’ to ‘/admin’)
-no404	Disables nikto attempting to guess a 404 page
-output+	Write output to this file (‘.’ for auto-name)
-Plugins+	List of plugins to run (default: ALL)
-port+	Port to use (default 80)
-RSAcert+	Client certificate file
-root+	Prepend root value to all requests, format is /directory
-Save	Save positive responses to this directory (‘.’ for auto-name)
-ssl	Force ssl mode on port

These are some important flags that you use when you are trying to gather information on the host. Below is a simple example of the Nikto:

You can check out all the plugins with `-list-plugins`.

For demonstration, I can use the ‘path’ plugin on google.com. By default nikto runs all the plugins.

I can save my output using ‘-o filename’. Be sure to end your filename with any of these extensions:

csv	Comma-separated-value
json	JSON Format
htm	HTML Format
nbe	Nessus NBE format
sql	Generic SQL (see docs for schema)
txt	Plain text
xml	XML Format

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