Skip to main content

Web Technologies

Web Technologies: Unmusking the Building Blocks of Web Applications

It is important to understand the underlying web technologies used by a target application, as it is a critical first step in bug bounty hunting. Knowing the server-side languages, frameworks, databases, and client-side libraries can help you identify common vulnerabilities associated with those specific technologies, narrowing down your attack surface.

Why Identify Web Technologies?​

Vulnerability Research: Specific technologies often have known vulnerabilities (CVEs) or common misconfigurations.

Attack Vector Prioritization: Certain technologies are more prone to particular types of attacks (e.g., SQL injection with specific database types, XSS with certain JavaScript frameworks).

Reconnaissance: It provides valuable clues about the application's architecture and potential weak points.

Identifying Web Technologies​

Here are some popular and effective resources for identifying the technologies a website uses:

BuiltWith.com​

A comprehensive website profiler that provides detailed information about what technologies a website is built with, including analytics, frameworks, advertising, CDNs, and more. It offers a broad overview from a single URL.

Usage: Simply enter the website's URL into the search bar on https://builtwith.com/.

Wappalyzer - Browser Extension​

A cross-platform utility that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, e-commerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools, and many other web technologies directly from your browser.

Usage: Install the Wappalyzer extension (available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.). Navigate to any website, and click the Wappalyzer icon in your browser toolbar to see a list of detected technologies.

Kali Linux built-in Tool: whatweb​

whatweb is an open-source web scanner that identifies web technologies, including content management systems (CMS), blogging platforms, JavaScript libraries, web servers, and much more. It also provides version numbers where possible.

Usage: Run whatweb from your Kali Linux terminal, specifying the full URL of the target.

Example Command:

whatweb https://example.com

Note: Always include https:// (or http://) to specify the protocol correctly.