What is a Target?

Acunetix Standard, Premium, and Online

A target is a website, web application, server, or network device that you would like to scan for security vulnerabilities. In general, a target license is required for each web application and for each domain. For licensing purposes, the following rules apply:

  • localhost and 127.0.0.1 consume 1 target
  • example.com and www.example.com count as 1 target
  • https and http count as 1 target
  • Subdomains are different targets, e.g. www.example.com and www2.example.com consume 2 targets
  • Different URLs in the same domain count as 1 target, e.g. www.example.com and www.example.com/blog/ consume 1 target
  • Different ports for the same address count as 1 target, e.g. www.example.com:8080 and www.example.com:8888 consume 1 target
  • Acunetix test sites (vulnweb.com) do not consume any targets
  • There is an upper limit to the number of targets you can create, irrespective of how many variations are created following the above rules; this limit is equal to 5 times the number of targets purchased and allowed by your license

For Acunetix 360, the rules may differ. For further information, see Acunetix 360 below.

What are Network Scans only target?

A Network Scans only target is a network server or device that can be configured in Acunetix, which you can scan for network vulnerabilities.

Acunetix Premium on-premises customers can configure an unlimited number of free network targets.

Acunetix Online customers can configure up to n Network Scans only targets where n is their license limit (essentially doubling their scan target quota). For example, a customer that has a license for 10 targets can configure 10 network targets in addition to the 10 web targets allowed by the license.

You can find more information about Configuring Targets here.

Acunetix 360

What is a Website?

A website is defined in Acunetix 360 as a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). An FQDN is the complete domain name for a specific target and consists of two parts; the hostname and the domain name.

The below examples are considered to be 1 website, as they share the same FQDN.

  • http://example.com
  • https://example.com
  • http://www.example.com
  • http://www.example.com/test

Subdomains and ports share the same FQDN but are considered to be different websites. For example:

  • http://example.com
  • http://test.example.com
  • http://example.com:81

 

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