Scan Me If You Can: Understanding and Detecting Unwanted Vulnerability Scanning
Xigao Li, Babak Amin Azad, Amir Rahmati, Nick Nikiforakis · 2023
Web vulnerability scanners (WVS) are an indispensable tool for penetration testers and developers of web applications, allowing them to identify and fix low-hanging vulnerabilities before they are discovered by attackers. Unfortunately, malicious actors leverage the very same tools to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in third-party websites. Existing research in the WVS space is largely concerned with how many vulnerabilities these tools can discover, as opposed to trying to identify the tools themselves when they are used illicitly.