How To Install WPScan on Ubuntu 14.04

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WPScan in Ubuntu 14.04. For those of you who didn’t know, WPScan is a black box WordPress vulnerability scanner. You can use it for problem location in case there are any vulnerable WordPress themes or WordPress plugins on your website.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation WPScan in Ubuntu 14.04.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 14.04, and any other Debian-based distribution.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install WPScan on Ubuntu 14.04

Step 1. First of all, make sure that all packages are up to date.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Install WPScan on Ubuntu.

Install all required packages:

apt-get install git ruby-dev ruby1.9.3 libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Now we need to clone the wpscan package from GitHub:

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/wpscanteam/wpscan.git

Once the download is finished, you will need to navigate to the wpscan directory and install the required ruby gems using bundler:

cd wpscan
sudo gem install bundler && bundle install --without test

To update WPScan, simply use the following command:

ruby wpscan.rb --update

How to use WPScan

You can use WPScan through arguments. You can get a complete list of arguments by executing the following command:

ruby wpscan.rb --help

Scan WordPress plugins:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate p

Scan Vulnerable plugins:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate vp

Scan themes:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate t

Scan vulnerable themes:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate vt

Scan user accounts:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate u

Scan for timthumb installations:

ruby wpscan.rb --url http(s)://www.yoursiteurl.com --enumerate tt

Congratulations! You have successfully installed WPScan. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the WordPress vulnerability scanner in Ubuntu 14.04 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official WPScan website.