"Detached" Scans

Detached is the name of a scan status, which is usually temporary and will update after a short time.  If your scan shows as detached the best course of action is usually to leave it for a few minutes (or even hours depending on the number of targets).  Continue reading to understand why.

What does "Detached" mean

To understand this issue you need to know a little about the AppCheck Scanner's architecture.  There are three main parts to the Scanner:

1. The User Interface
2. The Scan Coordinator
3. The Scan Process (running on one of several Scan Hubs)

When you start a scan through the UI that tells the coordinator you want to run a scan, and the coordinator selects a scan hub, sends the scan config to it and tells it to start the scan (a similar thing happens when you pause or abort a scan too).

When you go to view the status of a scan in the UI the UI gets the scan status from the coordinator, which should be receiving regular updates on the status from the scan hub.  If the coordinator hasn't received updates from the scan hub for five minutes or more, it reports that the scan status is "detached”, which is what you then see in the UI.

There can be many reasons for this, eg maybe the scan hub has been shut down, or the scan process has ended unexpectedly, or it can just be that the scan process is busy with a particularly intensive component that has temporarily blocked it from sending updates.

What to do when you see this

It is not uncommon for scans to appear as detached for a minutes or so between the scan starting and the initial batch of status updates returning to the UI.

If you see this status for more than around ten minutes at the start of scanning then you should raise a ticket with AppCheck Technical Support via https://appcheck-ng.com/get-help/.

If this issue occurs on your private scan hub it could be that the license for your hub has expired.  Currently AppCheck Technical Support will need to check this for you, although this information will be added to the UI in a future update.  Technical Support can correct the license expiry date if it is incorrect.