Scheduled Scans & Alerts

A scanner only helps if someone runs it. Turn on scheduled scanning in Settings > Scheduled Scanning and MuRu Guard generates a secret token. Point a cron job or your host's scheduled task at the tokenized URL and the scan runs unattended.

The token and the webcron call

• Use the Generate button. The token must be at least 32 characters; a shorter one is refused when you save and when the cron calls.
• To keep the token out of server and proxy logs, send it in a header instead of the URL: curl -H "X-MuruGuard-Token: YOUR_TOKEN" "https://example.com/administrator/index.php?option=com_ajax&plugin=muruguardshield&group=system&format=raw". The &token= form still works for cron services that can only call a URL.
• A scan runs at most once every 5 minutes and never twice at the same time; extra calls get HTTP 429. A wrong token gets HTTP 403 after a short delay.
• With the secret administrator URL on, a call with the correct token reaches the scan; anything else still gets the plain 404.
• The scheduled scan also refreshes the local country database once a month when country blocking uses it.
• Joomla 3 edition: use the address shown in Settings, which is the site-side one (index.php?option=com_ajax&plugin=muruguardshield&group=system&format=raw, without /administrator), because Joomla 3 sends every signed-out administrator request to the login page.

Alert channels

• Email -- send results to any address when a scheduled run finishes.
• Slack -- post findings into a channel through an incoming webhook.
• Discord -- the same webhook-based delivery for Discord communities.
• Telegram -- deliver alerts through a bot to a person or group chat.

Scheduled scanning, email alerts, and the Slack/Discord/Telegram channels are all Pro features and unlock with an active license.