Why does Acunetix WVS detect pages that don't exist on my website?

Resolution
This happens if your website uses custom 404 error pages and you have not configured Acunetix WVS to detect these custom 404 error pages.

If your website uses custom 404 error pages, and rather than returning an error to the browser it returns an error page, then you must configure Acunetix WVS so that it can recognise your custom error page

If you fail to do this, Acunetix WVS will think that the page exists on your web site, which will confuse the page guessing of Acunetix WVS. Consequently your site will have many false positives.

To configure a custom error page:

  1. Go to the Configuration > Settings node.
  2. Select the “Custom 404 Pages” sub-node of the “Scanner Settings” node.
  3. Click on the “Add pattern” button
  4. Enter the URL of your website and click on the “Autodetect” button.
  5. Highlight a unique sentence that identifies this page and click on the “Test pattern” button.
  6. Click on the “Add” button to add the configuration to the list.
  7. Click on the “Apply” button at the bottom to save your settings.