After learning what IAST and DAST are it's time to get our hands dirty and perform an exercise in which we use these processes to find vulnerabilities in real applications.
NOTE: There are no open-source IAST implementations, so we will have to use a commerical solution. Don't worry, there is a free-tier, so you will be able to follow the lab without paying anything.
This lab is based on this repo.
It contains a vulnerable Java application to be tested and exploited, Docker and Docker Compose for easy setup and Contrast Community Edition for IAST solution.
- Docker
- Docker Compose
- Contrast CE account. Sign up for free here.
NOTE: The authors of this article and of the 90 Days of DevOps program are in way associated or affilited with Contrast Security. We are using this commercial solution, because there is not an open-source one, and because this one has a free-tier that does not require paying or providing a credit card.
- As there are no open-source IAST implementation will use a commercial one with some free licenses. For this purpose, you will need 2 componenets: IAST solution from here - https://github.com/rstatsinger/contrast-java-webgoat-docker. You need docker and docker-compose installed in mac or linux enviroment (this lab is tested on Mint). Please follow the README to create account in Contrast.
To start, clone the repository.
Get your credentials from Contrast Security.
Click on your name in the top-right corner -> Organization Settings
-> Agent
.
Get the values for Agent Username
, Agent Service Key
and API Key
.
Replace these values in the .env.template
file in the newly cloned repository.
NOTE: These values are secret.
Do not commit them to Git.
It's best to put the .env.template
under .gitignore
so that you don't commit these values by mistake.
To run the vulnerable application, run:
./run.sh
or
docker compose up
Once ready, the application UI will be accessible on http://localhost:8080/WebGoat.
Now that we have a vulnerable application let's try to exploit it.
-
Install ZAP Proxy from here
An easy way to do that is via a DAST scanner. One such scanner is ZAP Proxy. It is a free and open-source web app scanner.
-
Install
zap-cli
from hereNext, install
zap-cli
.zap-cli
is an open-source CLI for ZAP Proxy. -
Run ZAP proxy
Run ZAP Proxy from its installed location. In Linux Mint it is by default in
/opt/zaproxy
. In MacOS it is inApplications
. -
Set env variables for
ZAP_API_KEY
andZAP_PORT
Get these values from ZAP Proxy. Go to
Options...
->API
to get the API Key.Go to
Options...
->Network
->Local Servers/Proxies
to configure and obtain the port. -
Run several commands with
zap-cli
For example:
zap-cli quick-scan -s all --ajax-spider -r http://127.0.0.1:8080/WebGoat/login.mvc
Alternatively, you can follow the instructions in the repo to cause some damage to the vulnerable application.
-
Observe findings in Constrast
Either way, if you go to the Vulnerabilities tab for your application in Contrast you should be able to see that Contrast detected the vulnerabilities and is warning you to take some action.
We saw how an IAST solution helped us detect attacks by observing the behaviour of the application. Let's see whether we could have done something to prevent these attacks in the first place.
The vulnerable application we used for this demo was packages as a container.
Let's scan this container via the grype
scanner we learned about in Days 14 and 15 and see the results.
$ grype contrast-java-webgoat-docker-webgoat
✔ Vulnerability DB [no update available]
✔ Loaded image
✔ Parsed image
✔ Cataloged packages [316 packages]
✔ Scanned image [374 vulnerabilities]
NAME INSTALLED FIXED-IN TYPE VULNERABILITY SEVERITY
apt 1.8.2.3 deb CVE-2011-3374 Negligible
axis 1.4 java-archive GHSA-55w9-c3g2-4rrh Medium
axis 1.4 java-archive GHSA-96jq-75wh-2658 Medium
bash 5.0-4 deb CVE-2019-18276 Negligible
bash 5.0-4 (won't fix) deb CVE-2022-3715 High
bsdutils 1:2.33.1-0.1 deb CVE-2022-0563 Negligible
bsdutils 1:2.33.1-0.1 (won't fix) deb CVE-2021-37600 Low
commons-beanutils 1.8.3 java-archive CVE-2014-0114 High
commons-beanutils 1.8.3 java-archive CVE-2019-10086 High
commons-beanutils 1.8.3 1.9.2 java-archive GHSA-p66x-2cv9-qq3v High
commons-beanutils 1.8.3 1.9.4 java-archive GHSA-6phf-73q6-gh87 High
commons-collections 3.2.1 java-archive CVE-2015-6420 High
commons-collections 3.2.1 3.2.2 java-archive GHSA-6hgm-866r-3cjv High
commons-collections 3.2.1 3.2.2 java-archive GHSA-fjq5-5j5f-mvxh Critical
commons-fileupload 1.3.1 java-archive CVE-2016-1000031 Critical
commons-fileupload 1.3.1 java-archive CVE-2016-3092 High
commons-fileupload 1.3.1 1.3.2 java-archive GHSA-fvm3-cfvj-gxqq High
commons-fileupload 1.3.1 1.3.3 java-archive GHSA-7x9j-7223-rg5m Critical
commons-io 2.4 java-archive CVE-2021-29425 Medium
commons-io 2.4 2.7 java-archive GHSA-gwrp-pvrq-jmwv Medium
coreutils 8.30-3 deb CVE-2017-18018 Negligible
coreutils 8.30-3 (won't fix) deb CVE-2016-2781 Low
curl 7.64.0-4+deb10u3 deb CVE-2021-22922 Negligible
curl 7.64.0-4+deb10u3 deb CVE-2021-22923 Negligible
<truncated>
As we can see this image is full with vulnerabilities.
If we dive into each one we will see we have vulnerabilities like RCE (Remote Code Execution), SQL Injection, XML External Entity Vulnerability, etc.
IAST and DAST are important methods that can help us find vulnerabilities in our application via monitoring its behaviour. This is done once the application is already deployed.
Container Image Scanning can help us find vulnerabilities in our application based on the library that are present inside the container.
Image Scanning and IAST/DAST are not mutually-exclusive. They both have their place in a Secure SDLC and can help us find different problems before the attackers do.
See you on Day 21.