A free attack-surface engine that only reports what's actually exploitable
cvENGINE chains discovery, scanning, and CVE correlation into one loop, then proves which findings can really hit you.
What it does You give it a domain and it continuously maps everything you expose — subdomains, IPs, ports, products, versions, TLS — using bbot, naabu, nmap, and Nuclei. It then correlates that inventory against actively exploited CVEs (CISA KEV, EPSS, Exploit-DB, Metasploit, and more) and attempts read-only validation so you get evidence, not a pile of alerts. Everything runs self-hosted in one Docker Compose stack, with an MCP server so AI agents can query your inventory.
The interesting bit The fire/smoke/ice rating ranks CVEs by real-world exploitation rather than raw severity, and a match now requires the same product with a version inside a bounded affected range — a product name alone doesn’t count. Version 1.3 adds Sentinels: lightweight agents you drop inside private networks so the same scanning pipeline reaches hosts no external scanner can.
Key highlights
- Shodan-style search over your own inventory (
port:3389 -host:vpn,tech:"apache tomcat" sev:high) - Change timeline with screenshot diffs, so new hosts and opened ports don’t slip past
- Bring your own AI: Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama, LM Studio, or vLLM — and it works without any model
- Bug bounty workbench pulling scope from HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, and YesWeHack
- Pinned scanner versions and a CycloneDX SBOM with every release
Caveats
- It’s an orchestration layer over well-known scanners — the value is the loop and the correlation, not novel scanning tech.
- Wants Python 3.14 and PostgreSQL 18, so expect a fairly fresh host; 4 GB RAM minimum.
- The “most advanced you can get for free” tagline is the README’s, not a benchmark.
Verdict Worth a look if you want commercial-style attack surface management without per-asset pricing and with full self-hosting. Skip it if you only need a one-off Nuclei run — this is built for continuous operation.
Frequently asked
- What is hevnsnt/CVEngine?
- cvENGINE chains discovery, scanning, and CVE correlation into one loop, then proves which findings can really hit you.
- Is CVEngine open source?
- Yes — hevnsnt/CVEngine is open source, released under the GPL-3.0 license.
- What language is CVEngine written in?
- hevnsnt/CVEngine is primarily written in Python.
- How popular is CVEngine?
- hevnsnt/CVEngine has 539 stars on GitHub.
- Where can I find CVEngine?
- hevnsnt/CVEngine is on GitHub at https://github.com/hevnsnt/CVEngine.