For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. This page is also available as Markdown.

What happens during a scan

What happens during a Snyk API and Web scan

During a target scan, Snyk API & Web goes through the target's URLs and interacts with every element found, filling out forms and clicking buttons, among other actions, to perform extensive tests on your target and identify as many vulnerabilities as possible.

Because of these thorough interactions, expect many requests and an influx of information into the target.

Scan components

A target scan involves three major components, each with a specific job:

  • The fingerprinter identifies the technologies used on the target.

  • The crawler goes through the target's URLs and interacts with every element found, clicking buttons and filling in forms, among other things.

  • The scanner finds vulnerabilities within the target's URLs.

Scan states

A target scan has several possible states:

  • As soon as you request a scan, it gets the Queued state.

  • After a queued scan begins, its state changes to Started.

  • After the fingerprinter, the crawler, and the scanner complete their jobs, the scan ends with the Completed state.

Additional scan states

A scan can have these additional states:

  • If a user stops an ongoing scan, the scan state changes to Canceled.

  • If the target is unreachable or a connection times out, the scan ends with the Failed state and a message indicating the error. Snyk uses the same state if a scan fails during execution.

  • If the Snyk team must manually confirm some vulnerabilities, the scan gets the Under Review state. After this manual review, the scan changes to Completed.

After the scan completes

After a scan finishes successfully, you can generate its scan reports and coverage reports.

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