Pentest your web server with Nikto

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The list of successful attacks through web servers is long: first, because attackers can access operating system resources through vulnerabilities that should never be accessible to the outside world; second, because faulty settings or errors are made by admins when setting up their web servers (e.g., configuring aliases and allowing directory listings) or securing certain areas and functions; and third, especially in dynamic web applications, because scripting language interpreters or application servers are allowed to run in the background, which itself causes security problems or lets insecure scripts or programs execute.

If you are responsible for the security of your corporate infrastructure, you probably have an overview of the web servers that are accessible from the Internet. Ideally, you will operate these servers in dedicated areas of your demilitarized zone (DMZ network) and deploy web application firewalls to prevent attacks wherever possible. Nikto [1] lets you check the web server, the configuration, and the stored content and generates a detailed report that helps you support the people responsible for further hardening operations.

Nikto is written in Perl and has been under development since 2001. Unlike many other security products from that time, however, Nikto is still under active development today. Even if the last version tagged as stable dates back to 2015, you can always retrieve the latest Perl script from the Git repository on GitHub. To prepare the tests, first clone the Git repository with the command:

git clone https://github.com/sullo/nikto.git

For this article, I assume that Perl is already installed on your computer. If not, you can use the Dockerfile included in the repository to install Nikto in an Alpine image by executing in the folder

docker build -t nikto .

After doing so, you can use Nikto just as you

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