Plugins allow other bits of code to hook into Nikto's processing and perform extra checks that cannot be achieved through the standard plugins.

Plugins are written in standard perl in the current context. They should be placed within the PLUGINDIR defined in the Nikto configuration file and must have a filename ending in .plugin.

An important concept to grasp about plugins and the order that are executed in is plugin weight: each phase will execute all defined plugins in the order defined by the weight. A plugin's weight is defined as a number between 1 and 100, where 1 is high priority and 100 is low priority. Plugins of equal weight will be executed in an undefined order.