Passive Scanning

Instant security checks without active probing. Safe for production.

Passive scans inspect HTTP responses, headers, cookies, and publicly accessible files. They never send attack payloads — making them safe to run on any website, including production.

#Speed

Most passive scans complete in 3-5 seconds. Larger sites with many endpoints may take up to 15 seconds.

#What It Checks

Category	Examples
Security Headers	CSP, HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy
Cookies	Secure flag, HttpOnly, SameSite, session cookie exposure
Information Leakage	Server headers, X-Powered-By, detailed error messages
Exposed Files	.git, .env, backup files, debug endpoints, admin panels
SSL/TLS	Certificate validity, protocol version, cipher suites
Open Redirects	Redirect parameters that can be abused for phishing
Technology Stack	Frameworks, libraries, CMS, CDN detection

#API Usage

Start a passive scan

POST /api/v1/scan
Authorization: Bearer pk_...

{
  "target_url": "https://example.com"
}

Response

{
  "scan_id": "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  "status": "completed",
  "findings_count": 12
}

#Crawling Behavior

The passive scanner crawls your site using breadth-first search, following same-origin links. It respects robots.txt and enforces rate limiting to avoid overwhelming your server.

#Crawl Limits

By default, the crawler follows up to 100 pages per scan. Forms are extracted but not submitted during passive scans.

#WAF Detection

The scanner automatically detects Web Application Firewalls (Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS WAF, etc.) and throttles request rates when it detects 403/429/503 patterns.

Tip. If your site sits behind a WAF, the scanner will slow down automatically. You don't need to configure anything.

#Understanding Findings

Each finding includes a likelihood rating based on evidence:

OBSERVED — Confirmed with concrete evidence. The issue is real.
LIKELY — Strong indicators but not 100% proven.
POSSIBLE — Some indicators, could be a false positive.
INFORMATIONAL — Not a vulnerability, just information.