To address your particular needs, we’ve included both free and commercial solutions.
Mozilla Observatory
Mozilla HTTP Observatory is one of the most effective online vulnerability scanners around. Founded by the Mozilla Foundation, this security scanner will analyze your website using different methods to identify potential bugs and security holes within your web app and servers.
The tests are divided into four different categories: HTTP Observatory, TLS Observatory, SSH Observatory and Third-party Tests.
TLS Observatory and Third-party tests (from sites like ssllabs.com, htbridge.com, tls.imirhil.fr,
securityheaders.com, and hstspreload.org) focus on SSL security and HTTP headers, and show really interesting results such as vulnerable cipher suites, for example:
Finally, there is also an SSH service scanner that needs to be initiated manually. Most of the time it will require you to whitelist the Observatory IP address to generate an accurate scan by avoiding firewall blocks.
Once you’ve identified your SSH weaknesses, you can start hardening your server to mitigate the most common SSH attacks.
Detectify
Detectify is a well-known online vulnerability scanner that enables business owners, infosec teams, and developers to check for over 1000 known vulnerabilities automatically.
Its built-in subdomain monitoring function will continuously analyze any hostile attacks. It also checks your site against the top OWASP vulnerability tests, allows you to integrate security scans with popular dev tools such as Slack, Zapier and Jira, and exports the results of all vulnerabilities found as a summary or a full report.
When pushing your first scan, it starts by grabbing server information, then crawling, fingerprinting, and for later information analysis, finishes with exploitation tests and generates the scan results.
When completed, the results will be displayed in your user dashboard, showing you the severity of the vulnerabilities found in your apps, as shown below:
You’ll see a complete list of security warnings and critical errors found on your website, from mixed HTTP/HTTPS content, to HTTP header vulnerable configurations, old SSL/TLS protocols, and much more.
Last but not least, Detectify will analyze your website against the famous OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities list and give you a final score, along with quick links that offer more information about how to fix each security-threatening issue:
Pentest Web Server Vulnerability Scanner
Pentest Web Server Vulnerability Scanner is another great product developed by PenTest-Tools, a company known for its wide range of infosec tools that can scan your website against any kind of vulnerability.
Here, we tested the web server online vulnerability scanner with the 20 free credits they offer for guests users.
The results show you a risk rating summary, potential sensitive files found, remote command execution vulnerabilities, SQL injection stats, arbitrary file reads, outdated server software, server misconfigured services, server software and technologies found, as well as a robots.txt file and a full HTTP security header check.
This tool is particularly useful when you need to perform a few specific tests; in our case the 20 free credits were enough to run two scans from the same IP before suggesting their Pro plan for a full deep scan.
Qualys FreeScan
While Qualys is famous for their SSL test, most people don’t know they also offer a full vulnerability scanner that analyzes your websites for free. This service lets you perform 10 free scans of any URLs or IP addresses. The Qualys free scanner analyzes for the following issues:
- OWASP web application auditing
- Network-related vulnerabilities
- Missing software patches
- SCAP compliance
- Hidden malware
- SSL certificate vulnerabilities
Once the results are complete, you’ll see something like this:
The results will be filtered by security impact level, from high severity to low severity vulnerabilities. As shown below at right, you can also see the associated CVE information for each specific vulnerability found.
Placing high on our list, it’s one of the best vulnerability scanners around; however, the manual approval process doesn’t make it the right choice for those in a hurry.
Probe.ly
This may not be a well-known web vulnerability scanner but it’s highly capable. Probe.ly will scan your web apps to find security issues and vulnerabilities and give you suggestions on how to fix them.
Probe.ly can be used to perform OWASP Top 10 scans, as well as to check for PCI-DSS, ISO27001, HIPAA and GDPR compliance.
It includes an easy-to-use interface that helps you scan your site in seconds. Once completed, it sends you results over email, and displays the full information in your client area interface, letting you download the scan results in PDF and CSV format for further analysis.
ImmuniWeb
ImmuniWeb Security Test is a solid, reliable product that performs web application security and privacy checks, including publicly known vulnerabilities, outdated software running on the remote server, HTTP methods, HTTP headers (HSTS, X-Frame-Options, X-Powered-By, X-Content-Type-Options, X-XSS-Protection, CSP, Public-Key-Pins and more), blacklist checking, remote WAF detection, as well as cryptojacking campaign detection within Javascript files.
With a friendly web-based interface, the scan reports results within seconds and gives you a final security score, letting you know about all vulnerabilities found and whether you qualify as PCI DSS compliant.
The final report includes other interesting details such as port/protocol detection, SSL certificate information and full cookie security analysis.
Upguard
Upguard is an Australian cybersecurity company that provides several solutions to help online startups keep their systems secure and prevent web breaches.
Their vulnerability scanner is one of the fastest we’ve found so far. It’s also completely free, a budget-friendly way to check your website against more than 40 high severity security vulnerabilities and popular CVEs.
The platform will automatically scan your server, web apps and network, including but not limited to man in the middle attacks, cross-site attacks, fraudulent email attacks, domain hijacking attacks, malware infections, open ports and unauthenticated DNS records.
Once completed, the scanner will show you a summary of the company behind the domain name (cloudflare.com in our tests), their cybersecurity rating, as well as the full description of each vulnerability found on your domain name and web apps.
