Xpanse is a bot in the security scanners category, operated by Palo Alto Networks.
Xpanse is the internet scanner of Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse, which maps internet facing assets and exposures for its customers.
Security scanners probe sites for vulnerabilities, certificates and exposed services. Some are research projects, some are vendors you hired. Allow your own scanners and block the rest at the WAF.
Xpanse identifies itself with this user agent string:
Hello from Palo Alto Networks, find out more about our scans in https://docs-cortex.paloaltonetworks.com/r/1/Cortex-Xpanse/Scanning-activityAnyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.
Share of Xpanse requests to sites protected by Transfon Security in the 7 days to 27 October 2026.
| United States | 100% |
| Google LLC AS396982 | 100% |
We have not confirmed whether Xpanse follows robots.txt. Add a rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.
User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse Disallow: /
User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse group, Xpanse ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.Cortex-Xpanse from Xpanse's user agent; check Palo Alto Networks's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
Allow Xpanse if it is a service you use, and keep its visits out of page views and ad requests either way.
Transfon Security for publishersXpanse is not a person. Exclude it from campaign and conversion data so reports reflect real visitors.
Transfon Security for advertisersAllow Xpanse only if it works for your store, and keep it away from cart and checkout.
Transfon Security for e-commerceIf Xpanse is a service you use, allow it on the endpoints it needs and block it elsewhere.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows Xpanse by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.
Transfon Security
Xpanse is a bot in the security scanners category, operated by Palo Alto Networks. Xpanse is the internet scanner of Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse, which maps internet facing assets and exposures for its customers.
We have not confirmed whether Xpanse follows robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped, and block it by user agent if it did not.
Add "User-agent: Cortex-Xpanse" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Cortex-Xpanse" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Xpanse may not follow it, and anyone can send Xpanse's user agent, so a fake Xpanse ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
Security scanners probe sites for vulnerabilities, certificates and exposed services. Some are research projects, some are vendors you hired. Allow your own scanners and block the rest at the WAF.
Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.
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