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Scilla

v1.3.0 open-source

Scilla is an information gathering tool that performs DNS, subdomain, port, and directory enumeration against a target domain or IP.

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Summary

Scilla is an open-source command-line reconnaissance tool that enumerates DNS records, subdomains, open ports, and web directories on a target domain. It is free to use, installed via Homebrew, Snap, a Go install, Docker, or building from source, and run from the terminal with subcommands for each enumeration type, including subdomain lookups through VirusTotal and directory scans that can ignore chosen status codes. It suits penetration testers and red teamers who need a single utility for early-stage target profiling rather than separate DNS, port, and directory tools. It sits in the information-gathering category alongside other recon utilities, producing a combined report across all scan types. First committed in 2020, it has ten contributors and has kept shipping releases, with fifteen commits in the past year.

Scilla is an information gathering tool that performs DNS, subdomain, port, and directory enumeration against a target domain or IP.

How Scilla helps

Which DNS records does this domain actually publish?

queries the target and lists the records it finds, giving a baseline of its DNS footprint before deeper testing starts

Which subdomains exist for this target that nobody told me about?

checks VirusTotal's passive data and can also brute-force against a supplied wordlist, returning the names it confirms

What is open on this target's ports right now?

scans a specified port range on the target and reports which ones respond, without needing a separate port scanner

Which directories exist on this web server that return real content?

walks common paths against the target and reports the ones that respond, letting chosen status codes be ignored so soft-404s or redirects do not flood the results

What does the full attack surface of this target look like from one pass?

runs the DNS, subdomain, port, and directory checks together and produces a combined report instead of stitching together separate tools' output

all 3 features, with the evidence for each →

Languages

Not documented

Features

3 capabilities across 3 capability groups

Built from Scilla's releases, docs, README and our own runs. “Seen” marks the month we first spotted a release the vendor didn't date. Group names and tags are our labels.

Compare with peers →

  • Scilla covers 3 of the 13 network discovery and scanning capabilities we track.

What Scilla offers you

  • Command-line interface1
Subdomain enumeration 1 feature Network discovery and scanning since 2024
Subdomain enumeration sources shipped Discovers subdomains using integrated data sources such as VirusTotal, DNSrepoNoC, BuiltWith, and SubdomainCenter. 3 releases · 1 other source · first seen Apr 2024

Shared capability: Subdomain enumeration

release

  • New source DNSrepoNoC integrated for subdomain enumeration. v1.3.0 · Apr 2024 · source · release history
  • New source BuiltWith integrated for subdomain enumeration. v1.3.0 · Apr 2024 · source · release history
  • New source SubdomainCenter integrated for subdomain enumeration. v1.3.0 · Apr 2024 · source · release history

example

  • Enumerate subdomains using VirusTotal scilla subdomain -db -vt -target example.com
DNS record enumeration 1 feature Network discovery and scanning since 2023
DNS record enumeration shipped Enumerates various DNS records, including SRV records, to discover service locations and configuration details. 1 release · 1 other source · first seen Apr 2023

Shared capability: DNS record enumeration

release

example

  • Enumerate SRV records for a target domain to discover service locations (e.g., XMPP, LDAP). scilla -d example.com --srv v1.2.7 · Apr 2023 · source
Attack surface inventory 1 feature Network discovery and scanning since 2021
Custom enumeration controls shipped Allows customization of enumeration behavior through flags for DNS server selection, host liveness checks, and port ranges. 3 releases · 2 other sources · first seen Jun 2021

Shared capability: Attack surface inventory

Also counts toward: Command-line interface

release

  • Adds the -alive flag to control which hosts are considered alive during enumeration. v1.2.6 · Oct 2022 · source · release history
  • Adds the -dns flag to specify custom DNS servers for resolution. v1.2.6 · Oct 2022 · source · release history
  • Adds --no-follow-redirects flag to prevent following HTTP redirects during scanning. v1.0.3 · Jun 2021 · source · release history

example

  • Scan a target without automatically following redirects, which is useful for analyzing initial responses or avoiding specific redirect loops. scilla --no-follow-redirects <target> v1.0.3 · Jun 2021 · source
  • Scan ports in a specified range scilla port -p 20-90 -target example.com

Lines in monospace are the tool's own words: help text parsed from its source, or an endpoint from its API document. Under release, a line is our summary of a dated release. Under docs, it is quoted from the tool's own documentation or website. Each links back to the source it came from.

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for Scilla, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail Scilla puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

Checking release-note history…

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Releases

5 entries

  1. April 20241
  3. April 20231
  5. October 20221
  7. September 20221
  9. June 20211

    5 entries

    1. v1.3.0 Apr 7, 2024 · release notes

      Scilla v1.3.0 adds Embedded default lists and new subdomain sources (SubdomainCenter, DNSrepoNoC, BuiltWith).

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.3.0 https://github.com/edoardottt/scilla.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.3.0
      • snap installation package added for Scilla.
      • New source SubdomainCenter integrated for subdomain enumeration.
      • New source DNSrepoNoC integrated for subdomain enumeration.
      • New source BuiltWith integrated for subdomain enumeration.

      4 details in Everything

    2. v1.2.7 Apr 1, 2023 · release notes

      Scilla v1.2.7 adds SRVSRVA DNS record type that advertises the hostname and port for a specific service, letting clients discover endpoints without hardcoded addresses. DNS records enumeration to the information gathering workflow.

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.2.7 https://github.com/edoardottt/scilla.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.2.7
      └──▷ USE IT
      Enumerate SRV records for a target domain to discover service locations (e.g., XMPP, LDAPLDAPA protocol for querying and modifying directory services, standardized under RFC 4511, commonly used to look up users, groups, and attributes in corporate identity stores like Active Directory.).
      shell 
      scilla -d example.com --srv
      • Adds SRV DNS record enumeration capability.
      • Adds dependabot integration.

      2 details in Everything

    3. v1.2.6 Oct 17, 2022 · release notes

      Adds -alive and -dns flags to Scilla for subdomain enumeration

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.2.6 https://github.com/edoardottt/scilla.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.2.6
      • Adds the -alive flag to control which hosts are considered alive during enumeration.
      • Adds the -dns flag to specify custom DNS servers for resolution.

      2 details in Everything

    4. v1.2.4 Sep 25, 2022 · release notes

      Adds -ua and -rua CLI flags to customize or randomize User-Agent headers

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.2.4 https://github.com/edoardottt/scilla.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.2.4
      └──▷ USE IT
      Set a specific User-Agent header for all requests using the new -ua flag.
      shell 
      scilla -url https://example.com -ua "Mozilla/5.0"
      Enable random User-Agent rotation for each request using the new -rua flag.
      shell 
      scilla -url https://example.com -rua
      • Adds -ua string flag to set a custom User-Agent header for all requests
      • Adds -rua flag to generate a random User-Agent string for each individual request

      2 details in Everything

    5. v1.0.3 Jun 17, 2021 · release notes

      Adds --no-follow-redirects flag to Scilla v1.0.3 CLI.

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.0.3 https://github.com/edoardottt/scilla.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.0.3
      └──▷ TRY IT
      Scan a target without automatically following redirects, which is useful for analyzing initial responses or avoiding specific redirect loops.
      $ scilla --no-follow-redirects <target>

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in edoardottt/scilla, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 1 ±0 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 1 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close 1.4 days first maintainer reply 0.1 hours
    6. Open backlog 6 of 56 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 6
    3. Contributors / month 1
    4. Commits / month 4
    5. Stars 1,271
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • other 100%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Libraries its release ships

    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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