Artemis is a modular Python vulnerability scanner from CERT-Polska that automates website security checks and generates human-readable reports, built for authorized scanning and coordinated disclosure workflows.
| Tool | CERT-Polska/Artemis — modular vulnerability scanner with automatic report generation, powering CERT PL scanning activities |
| Category | Web vulnerability scanning and reporting platform |
| Primary Use | Scanning websites you are authorized to assess for misconfigurations and outdated software, then exporting notification-ready reports for responsible disclosure |
| Safe Use | Intended for authorized security assessments, CERT/CSIRT constituency scanning, and lab environments; CERT PL uses it to notify organizations about hundreds of thousands of vulnerabilities |
| Telemetry Note | Scanner traffic is visible to defenders via its configurable CUSTOM_USER_AGENT user-agent and web request patterns; operators should announce scanning to avoid false positives |
Artemis is a modular vulnerability scanner developed and maintained by CERT-Polska, the Polish national CERT, and it is not a toy project — it is the engine behind CERT PL's actual scanning activities at national scale. The repository has accumulated roughly 1,200 stars, is written in Python, and ships under a permissive BSD-3-Clause license. What distinguishes it from the crowd of generic web scanners is its origin story: it was built to solve the operational problem a CERT actually faces, which is scanning enormous numbers of hosts across a constituency and then communicating findings to organizations in language a non-security administrator can act on.
The headline feature, per the README, is automatic report generation. Instead of dumping raw JSON or a wall of technical findings at the recipient, Artemis composes easy-to-read messages that are ready to be sent to the scanned organizations. The README includes a sample report that reads like a notification email: it lists addresses exposing version control system data such as a publicly readable .git/ directory, explains why making a code repository public may let an attacker learn the inner workings of a system and potentially find passwords or API keys, and recommends remediation in plain prose. This is a genuinely different design goal from most scanner output.
The second example in the README's sample report is equally instructive: it flags old Joomla installations with a specific version number attached, and rather than just crying vulnerability, it recommends either shutting down unused sites or applying regular core and plugin updates. That advisory tone — finding, risk explanation, remediation advice — is what you want if your pipeline ends in a human notification rather than a ticket in a triage queue. CERT PL states this automation enabled them to notify entities about hundreds of thousands of vulnerabilities, which tells you the tool is engineered for throughput, not just depth.
Architecture-wise, the README describes a genuinely modular design. Modules are the unit of capability, and the project keeps a separate repository, CERT-Polska/Artemis-modules-extra, for additional modules that couldn't be included in the main distribution due to non-BSD-compatible licenses. That licensing hygiene is worth noting for anyone planning commercial integration: the core stays clean BSD-3, and you opt into the extra modules knowingly. Writing your own module is documented in the official docs under a dedicated section, which signals that extensibility is a first-class design goal rather than an afterthought.
The development workflow reveals a containerized architecture. Running ./scripts/start --mode=development copies an example environment file, env.example, to .env, and builds the Artemis image locally from your working code instead of pulling from Docker Hub. Configuration lives in the .env file, including a CUSTOM_USER_AGENT variable that lets you set the scanner's identifying user-agent — a detail that matters both for transparency during authorized scans and for being identifiable in target logs. The web interface hot-reloads code changes without rebuilding the container, which is a nice operator-quality touch.
The test story is unusually detailed and shows real-world scars. The README warns against using python -m unittest directly as the command: entry in docker-compose.test.yaml, because when Python runs as PID 1 inside a container, subprocesses — especially Go binaries like Nuclei — suffer degraded I/O due to how PID 1 handles signals and stdout/stderr. The recommendation is unittest-parallel, whose worker processes sidestep the problem. That Nuclei reference is a significant architectural fact buried in a warning: Artemis embeds Nuclei engines as part of its scanning pipeline.
Code quality tooling is conventional and solid. pre-commit runs linters and formatters, enforced on CI, with pre-commit install hooking it into your local commits. Dependency management uses pip-tools: you edit requirements.in (or docs/requirements.in for docs dependencies), run ./scripts/compile-requirements to freeze requirements.txt, and commit both files. This reproducible pinning approach matters for a scanner whose findings should be consistent across runs and machines.
The project's credibility is reinforced by its conference and community footprint. Artemis was presented at BlackHat USA 2024 in Las Vegas and BlackHat Europe 2025 in London — the latter talk titled around nation-scale SecOps and how CERT PL scans Poland — as well as at the 71st and 69th TF-CSIRT meetings and the CONFidence conference. Development was additionally supported by Google Summer of Code in 2024 and 2025, which indicates sustained institutional investment and a healthy contributor onboarding pipeline.
The contributor section credits the KN Cyber science club of Warsaw University of Technology with initiating the project, alongside individual contributors handling code, documentation, ideas, infrastructure, and packaging. Contributions are welcome via both GitHub issues proposing new modules and pull requests, with the caveat that all contributions automatically fall under the BSD 3-Clause license. For an operator evaluating long-term maintenance risk, an active contributor base backed by a national CERT is about as good as open-source governance gets in this space.
A few operational cautions are warranted. The README explicitly states that Artemis is experimental software under active development, to be used at your own risk — a fair warning that findings and behavior may shift between versions. Its scale-oriented design means it will happily send large volumes of requests at whatever you point it at, so it belongs exclusively in authorized contexts: your own infrastructure, engagement-scoped targets with written permission, or a CERT-style constituency notification program where scanning authority has been established.
From a defender's perspective, Artemis is also worth knowing about from the blue-team side. Its traffic is identifiable in part through the configurable CUSTOM_USER_AGENT, and its module behaviors — probing for exposed .git/ directories, fingerprinting CMS versions like Joomla, and running Nuclei-style template checks — produce recognizable request patterns in web server logs and WAF telemetry. If you operate public-facing infrastructure, knowing how CERT-grade scanners manifest in your logs helps you distinguish authorized national scanning from opportunistic reconnaissance.
In summary, Artemis occupies a distinctive niche: it is a scanner built for the notification and disclosure end of the vulnerability lifecycle, not just the discovery end. Between its modular architecture, embedded Nuclei scanning, Docker-based deployment, pip-tools-pinned dependencies, and a report generator that writes prose a site administrator will actually read, it is a strong candidate for any authorized assessment program or CSIRT that needs to move from raw findings to coordinated remediation at scale.
CERT-Polska/Artemis.Educational analysis for authorized security professionals. Use only in controlled, authorized environments.
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