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Is it at all possible to verify information about the web server (tomcat, jboss, etc) that is hosting the actual web application? For instance lets say that there is a gaping security hole within tomcat that was discovered at midnight. Would it be at all possible to determine which web applications were hosted on this type of web server if I do not have control of it?

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See also: webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/2878/… – Senseful Sep 16 '10 at 20:21
Just the get the right vocab here...these 'server' are not called 'web servers'. They are called 'application servers'. Tomcat is a Servlet Container. app servers like WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss are Java EE servers. The latest Java EE is 6. – Sam Ucich Feb 22 at 21:59
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5 Answers

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If you look into the HTTP Responses Headers (which most browser dev tools will let you do), and look at the Server field. It should proudly display the software used to host the site (or sometimes the proxy). This "feature" can be disabled in many HTTP servers.

For example this page returned Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5

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It is important to that you can turn of that completely in many servers. In the case of jboss, although it can by also modified you will see something like X-Powered-By: Servlet 2.4; JBoss-4.3.0.GA (build: SVNTag=JBPAPP_4_3_0_GA date=200801031548)/Tomcat-5.5 – feniix Jul 1 '10 at 18:58
Also, in some cases, the default option is to send no powered-by ( or equivalent ) header. ( Many Perl webservers work this way ). – Kent Fredric Jul 15 '10 at 5:48
It's the HTTP Response Headers you need to check, as sent from the server. The Request Headers are what the browser sends. – w3d Feb 22 at 23:12
@w3d Thanks. Fixed now. – Kendall Hopkins Feb 23 at 0:26
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up vote 1 down vote

You could telnet the web server and sent

GET / HTTP/1.1

Then look at the Server-header.

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hmm +1 even though telnet is no longer standard on windows os – Woot4Moo Jul 1 '10 at 18:48
or nc... @neo: s/cold/could/ – akira Jul 1 '10 at 18:49
@akira thanks... – neo Jul 1 '10 at 18:51
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up vote 1 down vote

The Web Developer toolbar for Firefox has among its many options a way to view page response headers. (Information | View Response Headers)

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up vote 1 down vote

Check out http://netcraft.com/whats and put the url in Whats that site running?. Of course, you'd just be wanting to inform site admins of their "gaping security hole".

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Installing the Header Spy extension for Firefox will put this information in your FF status bar.

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