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Revising Nuclei FAQ
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ccosta-pd committed Dec 12, 2023
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"tools/nuclei/overview",
"tools/nuclei/install",
"tools/nuclei/running",
"tools/nuclei/faq"
"tools/nuclei/faq",
"tools/nuclei/faq-revision"
]
},
{
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---
title: "Nuclei FAQ"
description: "Common questions and answers about using Nuclei"
description: "Common questions and answers about Nuclei"
sidebarTitle: "FAQ"
---
<Tip>If you have other issues to report we'd love to share those with the community. Please join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/projectdiscovery), or reach out to us on [GitHub](https://github.com/projectdiscovery). </Tip>

<AccordionGroup>
<Accordion title="What is nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is a fast and customizable vulnerability scanner based on simple **YAML-based templates**.

It has two components, 1) [Nuclei](http://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei) engine - the core of the project allows scripting HTTP / DNS / Network / Headless / File protocols based checks in a very simple to read-and-write YAML-based format. 2) Nuclei [templates](http://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates) - ready-to-use **community-contributed** vulnerability templates.
## General

</Accordion>
Questions and answers on general topics for Nuclei.

<AccordionGroup>
<Accordion title="What is Nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is a powerful open-source vulnerability scanner that is fast and customizable. It uses simple templates (YAML-based) that describe how to detect, prioritize, and remediate security vulnerabilities for the Nuclei scanning engine.
The two components, the [Nuclei engine](http://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei) - is the core of the project. It allows scripting HTTP / DNS / Network / Headless / File protocols based checks in a very simple to read-and-write YAML-based format.
The Nuclei [templates](http://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates) - are custom-created or ready-to-use **community-contributed** vulnerability templates.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="What was the motivation to create Nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei was created to solve many of the limitations of traditional scanners, which always lacked the features to allow easy-to-write custom checks on top of their engine.
Nuclei was built with a focus on simplicity, modularity, and the ability to scale scanning for many assets.

Ultimately, we wanted to create something simple enough to be used by everyone with the complexity to integrate well with the intricacies of the modern technical stack.
Nuclei's features are implemented and tailored to allow rapid prototyping for complex security checks.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="How well-maintained is this Nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is actively maintained and supported by ProjectDiscovery. In general, we release every two weeks and continue to refine, update, and expand Nuclei and its associated capabilities.
Our team also actively monitors for announcements about new CVEs, exploits, and other vulnerabilities to quickly provide a response to address those issues.

We recently released Nuclei v3, [read more about that release on our blog.](https://blog.projectdiscovery.io/nuclei-v3-featurefusion/)
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="How can I support/contribute to this project? 💙" icon="fire-flame-curved" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is open-source! The best way to support Nuclei is to contribute new templates.

In addition, we are always interested in hearing about how our community uses Nuclei to solve unique security problems and would love to discuss more.
If you want to share the process of a solution you found in walk-through on our blog, we are happy to publish your guest post on the [ProjectDiscovery blog](https://blog.projectdiscovery.io).

Review more details about the project [through GitHub](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates) or [reach out to us on Discord.](https://discord.com/servers/projectdiscovery-community-695645237418131507)
</Accordion>

</AccordionGroup>

## Usage

Question and answers about using Nuclei.

<Accordion title="What was the genesis behind nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Traditional scanners always lacked the features to allow easy-to-write custom checks on top of their engine. And this is why we started developing Nuclei with a core focus on simplicity, modularity, and the ability to scan on many assets.
<AccordionGroup>

We wanted something simple enough to be used by _**everyone**_ while complex enough to integrate into the modern web with its intricacies. The features implemented in nuclei are tailored to allow very rapid prototyping of complex security checks.
<Accordion title="How do I install Nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei can be installed with several different options including: Go, Brew, and Dccoker. Check out [the Nuclei install page](/tools/nuclei/install) for details on all of the options.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="What modules does nuclei engine support?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei engine supports the following type of modules.
<Accordion title="What modules does Nuclei support?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei supports the following type of modules.

- [HTTP](/templates/protocols/http/)
- [DNS](/templates/protocols/dns/)
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- [FILE](/templates/protocols/file/)
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="What kind of scans can I perform with nuclei?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei can be used to detect security vulnerabilities in **Web Applications**, **Networks**, **DNS** based misconfiguration, and **Secrets scanning** in source code or files on the local file system.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="How well-maintained is this project?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
The nuclei project is actively developed and maintained by the [ProjectDiscovery](https://projectdiscovery.io/#/) team, and generally releases every 2 weeks.
<Accordion title="What kind of scans can Nuclei perform?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei can detect security vulnerabilities in **Web Applications**, **Networks**, **DNS** based misconfiguration, and **Secrets scanning** in source code or in files on the local file system.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="How can I support/contribute to this project? 💙" icon="fire-flame-curved" iconType="solid">
To help keep project momentum, we request everyone to write and share new templates with the community in the [template project](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates). Please help us maintain this public, ready to use, and up-to-date nuclei template repository.

If you found an interesting/unique security issue using nuclei and want to share the process walk-through in the form of a blog, we are happy to publish your guest post on the [ProjectDiscovery blog](https://blog.projectdiscovery.io).
<Accordion title="Where can I learn more about Nuclei Templates?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
To learn more about Nuclei templates, check out [the GitHub repository](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates), or and [explore additional documentation here](templates/introduction).
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="I found results with nuclei. When should I report it?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
**Wait a minute** -- after nuclei detected a security issue, it's always advised to have a second look before reporting it. Here's a tip to confirm/validate the issues.

<Accordion title="How do I validate nuclei results?" icon="fire-flame-curved" iconType="solid">
Once nuclei finds a result, and you have vulnerable **target** and **template**, rerun the template with **`-debug`** flag to inspect the output against the expected matcher defined in the template. In this way, you can confirm the identified vulnerability.
</Accordion>
<Accordion title="What do I do with Nuclie scan results?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
After detecting a security issue **we always recommend that you validate it a second time** before reporting it.

**To validate:**
If you have both a vulnerable target and template, rerun the template with `-debug` flag to inspect the output against the expected matcher defined in the template. Use this to confirm the identified vulnerability.

Once you confirm the result, report it!
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="How much traffic does nuclei generate?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
By default nuclei will make several thousand requests (both HTTP protocol and other services) against a single target when running **all nuclei-templates**. This stems from over 3500 nuclei templates in the [[template releases](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/releases/), with more added daily.

<Note>As default, few templates listed [here](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/master/.nuclei-ignore) are excluded from default scans.</Note>
<Accordion title="How much traffic does Nuclei generate?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
By default, Nuclei will make several thousand requests (both HTTP protocol and other services) against a single target when running **all nuclei-templates**.
This is the result of running over 3500 templates (_with an active and growing template library_).

By default, [the following templates](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/master/.nuclei-ignore) are excluded from default scans.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Is it safe to run nuclei?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
We consider two factors to say **"safe"** in context of nuclei -

1. The **traffic** nuclei makes against the target website.
2. The **impact** templates have on the target website.

<Check>
**HTTP Traffic**

Nuclei usually makes fewer HTTP requests than the number of templates selected for a scan due to its intelligent request reduction. While some templates contain multiple requests, this rule generally holds true across most scan configurations.
</Check>
<Accordion title="Is it safe to run Nuclei?" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">

We consider two factors for “safety” within the context of Nuclei.

- The traffic Nuclei creates against the target
- The impact templates have on the target

**Traffic**

Nuclei usually makes fewer HTTP requests than the number of templates selected for a scan due to its intelligent request reduction.
While some templates contain multiple requests, this rule holds true across most scan configurations.

**Templates**

The library of Nuclei templates houses a variety of templates which perform fuzzing and other actions which may result in a DoS against the target system ([see the list here](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/master/.nuclei-ignore)).

To ensure these templates are not run accidentally they are tagged and excluded from the default scan. These templates can be only executed when explicitly invoked using the `-itags` option.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="What are the specifics for Nuclei's license?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is an open-source project distributed under the [MIT License](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei/blob/master/LICENSE.md).
</Accordion>

<Check>
**Safe Templates**
<Accordion title="What do I do if I have more questions? 🙋" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Please join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/projectdiscovery), or contact us via [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pdnuclei).
</Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

The nuclei templates project houses a variety of templates which perform fuzzing and other actions which may result in a DoS against the target system (see [the list here](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/master/.nuclei-ignore)). To ensure these templates are not accidentally run, they are tagged and excluded them from the default scan. These templates can be only executed when explicitly invoked using the `-itags` option.
</Check>
## Troubleshooting

</Accordion>
Questions and answers about troubleshooting scenarios for Nuclei.

<Accordion title="What is nuclei's license?" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Nuclei is an open-source project distributed under the [MIT License](https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei/blob/master/LICENSE.md).
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="I have more questions! 🙋" icon="circle-info" iconType="solid">
Please join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/projectdiscovery), or contact us via [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pdnuclei).
<AccordionGroup>
<Accordion title="Why is Nuclei(Template) being flagged as malware? " icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
Nuclei uses templates to scan for potential vulnerabilities. These templates are files that contain information on identifying certain types of vulnerabilities.
Think of the templates as a building blueprint. On its own a blueprint cannot cause harm, as it only describes how a building or construct (in this example, a vulnerability) can be built or identified.

**For example:**
- `Webshell.Generic.118` is a template to check for the vulnerability CVE-2017-12615, which is a specific vulnerability in some versions of Apache Tomcat.
- `Backdoor.Generic.LinuxTsunami` is a template that can identify the infamous Linux Tsunami backdoor if it were present on a system.
- `kingdee-erp-rce.yaml` is a template designed to identify a remote code execution vulnerability in Kingdee ERP software.

These files are being flagged as **malware** by anti-malware solutions because they contain patterns that match known vulnerabilities.
It's similar to a textbook on viruses being detected as an actual virus.

Remember, these templates can't "harm" your computer, they are not executing any malicious code on your system.
However, if used as part of a vulnerability scanning process against an insecure system, they could help identify weaknesses.
</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Missing dependencies in headless mode on Linux" icon="triangle-exclamation" iconType="solid">
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snap install chromium
```
</Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>
</AccordionGroup>

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