Discover the secrets of vulnerability scanning with Nuclei-templates — the ultimate tool for cyber security

Adam Rhys Heaton
3 min readJan 26, 2023

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Nuclei-templates is a security tool that is used in penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to identify potential vulnerabilities in a target system or network.

The tool is designed to automate the process of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities by using a set of pre-defined templates, or “nuclei,” that contain information about known vulnerabilities and the corresponding payloads to exploit them. In this article, we will go over the steps on how to use nuclei-templates and the commands that are needed to run a scan.

Before you can start using nuclei-templates, you will need to install the tool on your computer. You can download the tool from the official website and follow the instructions to install it. Once the tool is installed, you will need to select a target system or network to scan. You can specify the IP address or domain name of the target system.

The tool comes with a built-in library of templates that cover a wide range of vulnerabilities and payloads. You can choose the template that you want to use based on the type of vulnerabilities you want to scan for. Once you have selected the template, you can run the scan by clicking on the “Start” button. The tool will automatically execute the payloads and check for potential vulnerabilities in the target system. After the scan is complete, the tool will generate a report that includes a list of potential vulnerabilities that were identified during the scan. You can review the report to see if any vulnerabilities were found and what type of vulnerabilities they are.

If vulnerabilities were found, you can further investigate and exploit them. You can use the information in the report to manually verify the results of the scan to ensure that the vulnerabilities are real and that there are no false positives.

Here are some examples of common commands that you can use to run a scan using nuclei-templates:

To run a scan on a specific target:

nuclei -t <target IP or domain> -l <path to template file>

To run a scan using a specific template:

nuclei -l <path to template file> -t <target IP or domain>

To run a scan and save the results to a file:

nuclei -t <target IP or domain> -l <path to template file> -o <output file>

To run a scan using multiple templates:

nuclei -t <target IP or domain> -l <path to template file1> -l <path to template file2> -o <output file>

To view the available options and flags:

nuclei -h

It’s important to note that nuclei-templates is not a replacement for manual penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. The tool is designed to automate the process of identifying and exploiting known vulnerabilities, but it is still important to manually verify the results of the scan to ensure that the vulnerabilities are real and that there are no false positives.

Additionally, the tool only covers known vulnerabilities and payloads, so it is important to also perform manual testing and scanning to identify unknown vulnerabilities.

Also, keep in mind that these commands and the tool itself may vary depending on the version of the tool you are using, so it’s recommended to refer to the official documentation of the tool to get the updated commands.

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Adam Rhys Heaton

Cybersecurity expert 🛡️ Penetration testing 🔎 Cyber Threat Intel 🚨 Educating on best practices 📚 Speaker 🗣️ Follow my blog for all things security 🛡️