April 9, 2026Updated April 10, 20268 min readby Vladimir Kamenev

Free Website Security Scanner — OWASP Top 10:2025 Check (38 Tests)

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WeLead Lab's free website security scanner runs 38 passive OWASP Top 10:2025 checks on any public URL in under 30 seconds — no signup, no attacks, no risk to your site.

Why you need to scan your website right now

Cyberattacks are no longer a "big enterprise problem." The numbers are brutal:

43% of all cyberattacks target small businesses, yet only 14% are prepared to defend themselves (Accenture / Verizon DBIR).

The average cost of a data breach hit $4.88 million in 2024 — an all-time high, up 10% year-over-year (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report).

60% of small businesses close within 6 months of a successful cyberattack (US National Cyber Security Alliance).

A new website is attacked, on average, every 39 seconds (University of Maryland).

94% of malware is delivered via email or compromised websites — and your website might be the compromised one without you knowing.

Most business owners assume "there's nothing valuable on my site, why would anyone attack it?" Attackers don't care what's on your site. They want to plant SEO spam, mine cryptocurrency on your visitors' browsers, steal customer data from your forms, or pivot into your hosting account.

The good news: most breaches start with vulnerabilities any free website security scanner can catch in seconds. Exposed .env files, missing security headers, outdated jQuery — basic stuff that attackers' bots scan for 24/7.

What is OWASP Top 10:2025?

The OWASP Top 10 is the industry-standard list of the most critical web application security risks, published by the Open Web Application Security Project. The 2025 edition groups vulnerabilities into ten categories:

A01 — Broken Access Control: users accessing things they shouldn't (admin pages, other users' data)

A02 — Cryptographic Failures: weak encryption, leaked secrets, missing HTTPS

A03 — Injection: SQL injection, XSS, command injection

A04 — Insecure Design: flawed architecture, missing threat modeling

A05 — Security Misconfiguration: default passwords, verbose errors, missing headers

A06 — Vulnerable and Outdated Components: old jQuery, unpatched CMS, abandoned libraries

A07 — Identification and Authentication Failures: weak login, missing cookie flags

A08 — Software and Data Integrity Failures: unsigned scripts, missing SRI, supply-chain attacks

A09 — Security Logging and Monitoring Failures: no security.txt, no CSP reporting, no incident visibility

A10 — Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions: stack traces, debug messages, unhandled errors leaking info

The OWASP Top 10:2025 is the baseline every website should meet. Our free website security scanner maps every check directly to these categories so you know exactly which risk you're looking at.

What our free website security scanner checks — all 38 tests

Here's the complete list of passive checks the free website security scanner performs, grouped by OWASP category.

A01 — Broken Access Control (8 checks)

Exposed .git/ directory — attackers can download your entire source code and credentials

Exposed .env files — the #1 cause of cloud account takeovers

Exposed .htaccess / web.config — leaks server routing rules

Exposed backup.zip, db.sql, wp-config.php.bak — database and config dumps

CORS wildcard (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *) with credentials

Missing X-Frame-Options / frame-ancestors — clickjacking vulnerability

Dangerous HTTP methods enabled (TRACE, PUT, DELETE, CONNECT)

Directory listing enabled on common paths

A02 — Cryptographic Failures (4 checks)

Server version disclosure (Server: Apache/2.4.29) — tells attackers exactly which exploit to use

X-Powered-By header leak (PHP version, framework version)

Debug endpoints exposed (/debug, /_profiler, /actuator)

Admin panels exposed (/wp-admin, /admin, /phpmyadmin) without IP restriction

A03 — Injection (5 checks)

Vulnerable jQuery version (anything below 3.5.0 has known XSS)

Vulnerable AngularJS, Bootstrap, Lodash versions

Outdated WordPress, Drupal, Joomla core

Outdated WordPress plugins with public CVEs

Known-vulnerable CDN references (unpinned hashes)

A04 — Insecure Design (4 checks)

HTTPS not enforced (site accessible over HTTP)

Missing HSTS header (or max-age below 6 months)

HTTP → HTTPS redirect missing or broken

Mixed content (HTTPS page loading HTTP assets)

A05 — Security Misconfiguration (4 checks)

SQL error messages leaked in responses

Missing Content Security Policy (CSP)

Unsafe CSP directives (unsafe-inline, unsafe-eval, wildcards)

Missing Referrer-Policy / Permissions-Policy

A06 — Vulnerable and Outdated Components (2 checks)

Password autocomplete disabled (actually bad — forces weak passwords)

Form missing CSRF token on state-changing endpoints

A07 — Authentication Failures (3 checks)

Cookies missing HttpOnly flag — stealable via XSS

Cookies missing Secure flag — stealable over HTTP

Cookies missing SameSite attribute — CSRF risk

Login forms served over HTTP (yes, this still happens in 2026)

A08 — Software and Data Integrity Failures (2 checks)

Missing Subresource Integrity (SRI) on external scripts

Reverse tabnabbing (target="_blank" without rel="noopener")

A09 — Security Logging and Monitoring Failures (2 checks)

Missing /.well-known/security.txt (RFC 9116) — no way to report vulnerabilities

No CSP reporting endpoint configured

A10 — Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions (2 checks)

Stack traces exposed in error responses

Framework debug pages reachable (Django debug, Laravel Whoops)

Unhandled exceptions leaking paths, database names, or internal IPs

How to use the free website security scanner

Paste your URL into the WeLead Lab website analyzer — use https://yourdomain.com.

Click "Analyze." The scanner runs all 38 checks in 20–30 seconds. It's 100% passive — nothing is attacked, nothing is broken.

Read your OWASP report. You'll get a grade, a prioritized list of findings, and fix instructions for each one.

No signup. No email. No credit card. Just results.

What your results mean — Grade and risk levels

Your report gets an overall grade from A to F:

A (90–100) — Excellent. Top 5% of websites. Minor polish only.

B (80–89) — Good. A few fixable issues, no immediate risk.

C (70–79) — Average. Real vulnerabilities present. Fix this quarter.

D (60–69) — Poor. Multiple high-risk issues. Fix this week.

F (below 60) — Critical. You have active, exploitable vulnerabilities. Fix today.

Every finding is also tagged by risk level:

Critical — actively exploitable right now (exposed .env, .git, SQL errors, admin login over HTTP)

High — easy to exploit with known techniques (vulnerable jQuery, missing HSTS, unsafe-inline CSP)

Medium — exploitable but requires more work (missing SRI, weak cookie flags)

Low — hardening improvements (missing security.txt, Referrer-Policy)

Info — good-to-know context, not a vulnerability

How to fix the 6 most common findings

These are the issues the free website security scanner finds most often — and how to fix each one.

1. Exposed .env file Move .env outside your web root, or add a server rule to block it. On Apache, add RedirectMatch 404 /\.env to .htaccess. On Nginx, add location ~ /\.env { deny all; return 404; }. Then rotate every credential inside it — assume they're already leaked. 2. Missing security headers Add these to every response: Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains, X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff, X-Frame-Options: DENY, Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin, Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'. On Cloudflare, use Transform Rules. On WordPress, use the "Security Headers" plugin. 3. Outdated jQuery (versions below 3.5.0) Upgrade to jQuery 3.7+ or remove jQuery entirely if your theme no longer needs it. jQuery pre-3.5 has public XSS exploits that automated bots try on every site they crawl. 4. Cookies missing HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite Set them in your framework's session config. In PHP: session.cookie_httponly=1, session.cookie_secure=1, session.cookie_samesite=Lax. In Node/Express: app.use(session({ cookie: { httpOnly: true, secure: true, sameSite: 'lax' } })). 5. Server version disclosure Remove Server and X-Powered-By headers. Apache: ServerTokens Prod and ServerSignature Off. Nginx: server_tokens off;. PHP: expose_php = Off in php.ini. 6. Missing security.txt Create /.well-known/security.txt with at minimum: Contact: mailto:[email protected] and Expires: 2027-01-01T00:00:00Z. Takes 2 minutes and satisfies OWASP A09.

Passive scanning vs active scanning — what's the difference?

Our free website security scanner is 100% passive. That means it only reads what's publicly accessible on your site: headers, HTML, JavaScript, cookies, standard file paths. It never sends malicious payloads, never tries to log in, never attacks forms, and never triggers any destructive action. It's safe to run on production, and safe to run on websites you don't own.

Active scanning is what professional pentesters do: they actively try to exploit vulnerabilities, inject payloads, bypass authentication, and probe deeper endpoints. Active scans are more thorough but require written permission from the site owner, can trigger WAFs, and can destabilize fragile applications.

For WeLead Lab clients, we also run deep active security audits that go far beyond the 38 passive checks — including authenticated testing, business-logic review, and manual exploitation. If your passive scan comes back with critical findings, or you're in a regulated industry (healthcare, finance, legal), you'll want the full audit.

The free website security scanner at WeLead Lab is the fastest way to find out if your site is leaking secrets, running vulnerable libraries, or missing critical security headers. You'll know in 30 seconds whether you're in the safe zone or sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Run your free OWASP Top 10 scan now →

No account. No email. No limits. Just answers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the free website security scanner safe to run on my production site? Yes, 100% safe. It's a passive scanner — it only reads public responses and performs no attacks, no fuzzing, no logins, and no writes. You can run it on live production, staging, or any URL you control without any risk to uptime or data. Will it actually attack my website? No. The scanner sends a small number of standard HTTP GET requests (fewer than a search engine crawler) and analyzes the responses. It never sends exploit payloads, never tries credentials, and never touches forms or databases. Can I scan any website, or only my own? You can scan any publicly reachable website. Because all checks are passive and equivalent to a normal browser visit, no permission is required. However, you should only act on findings for sites you own or have explicit authorization to test — reporting vulnerabilities on sites you don't own should go through the site's security.txt contact. How often should I run a security scan? At minimum, scan every time you deploy changes, install a new plugin, or update your CMS. For most small businesses, a monthly scan is the sweet spot. High-traffic or regulated sites should automate weekly scans. The WeLead Lab website analyzer is free, so there's no reason not to run it often. What is the OWASP Top 10 and why does it matter? The OWASP Top 10 is the globally recognized list of the most critical web application security risks, maintained by the non-profit Open Web Application Security Project. It's used by PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and most government security frameworks as the baseline for "are you doing the basics?" If your site fails OWASP Top 10:2025 checks, you're failing the industry standard — and you're exactly the kind of easy target automated attack bots look for.

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