Running scans using a specific template version

[pdelteil]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I'm often having difficulties running a scan using only the latest templates due to the use of axiom (deleted instances after every scan).

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be useful to run a scan using as input the version of the templates release.

Example: nuclei -t ~/nuclei-templates -vt '8.5.9'

[ehsandeep]

@pdelteil to support features like this we need to have a copy of all versions on the machine and we only store the latest version of the template release, so this might be not possible to implement, as far as the use case is concerned, I can suggest using nuclei -nt on a new fleet of machines, as nuclei will auto-update latest templates as soon as you execute nuclei after template release creation.

[forgedhallpass]

@pdelteil

You can clone a specific version (without history) into a directory of your choosing (e.g. /tmp):
git clone --depth=1 --branch v8.5.8 https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates.git and then you can use nuclei -update-directory /tmp/nuclei-templates-8.5.8 -no-update-templates. You can easily create a shell script for this scenario, which would automatically do this for you, just don't forget to set the template directory back to your default one after you've finished

[pdelteil]

Thanks. I didn't think about that alternative. I will give it a try.

[pdelteil]

So, it works with this function:

runScanTemplateVersion v8.5.8 urls.txt

runScanTemplateVersion()
{
    if [ -z "$1" ] | [ -z "$2" ]
    then
      echo "Use ${FUNCNAME[0]} version urls.txt"
      return 1;
    fi
    #git repo
    gitURL="https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates.git"
    branch="$1"
    file="$2"
    folder="/tmp/nuclei-templates-$branch"

    if [ -d "$folder" ] 
    then
        echo "Directory $folder exists. Skipping git clone" 
    else
        git clone --depth=1 --branch $branch $gitURL $folder
    fi

    nuclei -update-directory $folder -no-update-templates -l $file
}

The only problem is that running nuclei gives the following message (which is misleading):

[pdelteil]

Well, after testing it is not what I really intended to do, since every branch (or version) contains all previous branches/versions. I need to find a way to get only the new templates from version to version.

I think this would work:

git clone version1 folder1
git clone version2 folder2

#find not duplicated templates  
#copy the into /tmp/new-templates 
nuclei -update-directory  /tmp/new-templates  -no-update-templates -l $file 

[forgedhallpass]

Could you explain the motivation behind this? What is the added benefit of running the newly added templates only between versions? If you've ran your scans with the latest version of the templates and there is a new release, you have an option to run the newly added ones only.

[pdelteil]

I'm sorry for not answering it before.

The idea is that sometimes I'm interested in running some new (and hot) templates, but not all (latest release). I could run them by tag or id manually, but it would take some manual work and time.

[forgedhallpass]

You could extend your script with something like the following:

git diff v8.8.3...v8.8.4 --name-only | grep ".yaml$"

This would return only the paths of the templates that were added or changed in the v8.8.4 release. You can then iterate the results and execute new scans.

In #1452, we'll probably add support for loading template paths from a file, meaning, you won't even need the iteration part anymore.

[forgedhallpass]

With the new -template-url flag, you could theoretically also host the resulting file via a python3 -m http.server, but that might be a little overkill 😄 (the remote-template-domain would also need to be changed)

[forgedhallpass]

#1452 was implemented, you should be able to reference the desired template paths from a file. Theoretically you should have everything in place to achieve what you wanted :)

[pdelteil]

#1452 was implemented, you should be able to reference the desired template paths from a file. Theoretically you should have everything in place to achieve what you wanted :)

Thanks a lot. I will give it a try.

[forgedhallpass]

@pdelteil we've decided to add direct support for this feature:

Option to run only new template by given version

You can try it out on the dev branch. It will be present in the next release :)

[pdelteil]

Thanks @forgedhallpass.

I will give it a try!