Reconmap vs w3af

Reconmap is a free, open-source collaboration platform for planning, conducting, and documenting penetration test projects across assets and clients. It supports multiple top-level organisations and includes project templates, task management, and client management. Vulnerability tracking and a templates database help organize findings, while users can automate security commands and schedule them with cron expressions. Reports can be generated in Word, Markdown, and Typst formats, with custom whitelabel reporting. Integrations can send vulnerabilities to Jira or Azure DevOps and deliver event-driven HTTP notifications through webhooks. Security features include SSO, OpenID and SAML user federation, two-factor authentication, email verification, and an audit log. A REST API with token authentication supports connections to external tools and scripts. Deployment options include Docker Compose, Kubernetes, manual installation, and hosted SaaS maintained by the project’s lead developers through Netfoe. The documentation positions Docker Compose for small teams and Kubernetes for production deployments and large teams; it also cautions that Compose is not designed for high availability or horizontal scaling out of the box.

w3af is a free, open-source web application security scanner for vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. It can identify more than 200 vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and OS command injection. Its workflow starts with crawler plugins that find URLs and injection points, continues with audit plugins that check for vulnerabilities, and can use attack plugins to exploit findings. Other plugin types cover infrastructure detection, request and response analysis, output, brute force, request modification, and evasion.

Users can scan and analyze results in a GTK graphical interface or a console. Web application payloads can interact with Metasploit when an exploit provides exec() capability. Developers can use the REST API from development languages and run it in Docker; scripts and the API also support automation. The project documents Linux and macOS installation, including running in Docker without installing w3af dependencies. It is available for Linux, macOS, web, API, and self-hosted deployment. REST API traffic over HTTP is unencrypted, so the documentation recommends added protection such as an SSL proxy for publicly reachable deployments.