History & Trivia

The Nikto 1.00 Beta was released on December 27, 2001, (followed in days by a 1.01 bug fix release!).

Over the course of two years Nikto's code evolved into the most popular freely available web vulnerability scanner. The 2.0 release, in November, 2007 represents several years of improvements. Since 2007, the major version has not changed however development has continued on Github.

In 2008, David Lodge officially joined the development team and assumed leadership of Nikto while Chris Sullo pursued another committment. In 2009, Sullo rejoined the project.

The original changelog can be found in the Old CHANGES.txt file.

The name "Nikto" is taken from the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and of course subsequent abuse by Bruce Campbell in the most excellent "Army of Darkness." The word crops up in many places including Star Wars, a possible covert Beatles album, and more--for additional trivia please see blather.net.

Pronunciation

Over the years, the authors heard many pronunciations of the word "Nikto." While we ignore most attempts and secretly applaud those who get it right, a few are just so wrong as to warrant mention, such as "Nikito" (really). If you must know, the "official" pronunciation should be as in "Nick-Toe".