Foregenix ThreatView/WebScan

Foregenix ThreatView/WebScan is a web crawler operated by Foregenix Limited. Foregenix perform security and risk scanning on the web sites of eCommerce merchants for a number of banks and card brands globally. The service assists these organisations in controlling and identifying fraud and financial losses, with a particular focus on trying to identify compromised merchants before they end up in the card brand's compromise investigation process. Early detection (prior to fraud losses escalating) can save the banks and merchants alike considerable sums. The solution has two primary modes of operation Scanning for active malware, this normally entails pulling a very limited number of pages within a sandboxed context for analysis at various stages of DOM initialisation. From the target sites perspective, the operation is simply another browser requesting a small number of pages as normal. Scanning for known publicly exploitable vulnerabilities and outdated software solutions as these attributes are frequently exploited by threat actors to introduce malware targeting financial information. Typically a complete scan comprises less than one hundred requests and is already rate limited on our side.

Scanning is always "passive" in nature, relying on GET, HEAD and OPTIONS requests only. The scanning heads by default abide by the "robots.txt" file but this can be overridden by the scan initiator (usually one of our banking clients). This override, to force a scan/assessment is not actioned all that frequently.

Foregenix ThreatView/WebScan crawls websites to monitor website availability, performance, and analytics. It is operated by Foregenix Limited as part of their monitoring and analytics infrastructure. If you see this bot in your server logs, it is a verified crawler and generally safe.