A Dive into Vulnerability Scanning with OWASP ZAP, its Features, and Alert Types
Web application security is very crucial for protecting data and services from malicious threats which can lead to data loss, financial damage, and reputation loss of organisation. In this blog, we are going to know about significance of vulnerability scanning for web apps and the role of OWASP ZAP in this.
The Significance of Vulnerability Scanning:
Vulnerability scanning is a key part of web security. It helps find and fix vulnerabilities in your website before attackers can exploit them. Regular scans reduce the chances of data breaches and cyberattacks.
Vulnerability scans not only uncover known issues but also discover misconfigurations and weak spots like easy-to-guess passwords. This helps you stop problems early and follow security rules.
If you want to look into top 10 risks published by OWASP, please go through this blog on OWASP Top 10.
Ignoring vulnerability scanning can lead to big problems like financial loss, damaging organisation’s reputation, facing legal trouble and many more can join the line. So, it’s vital to understand why it’s crucial for your web security and use it in your security plan.
Introduction to OWASP ZAP and Its Alignment with OWASP Top 10:
OWASP ZAP( Zed Attack Proxy), is a powerful open-source security testing tool designed to help organisations identify and rectify vulnerabilities in their web applications. One of the distinguishing features of OWASP ZAP is its alignment with the OWASP Top 10, a list of the ten most critical web application security risks.
OWASP ZAP, often called a vulnerability scanner, falls under the category of dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools. Its primary purpose is to evaluate the security of web applications by conducting active scans to uncover vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This involves the systematic submission of different requests to the application, followed by an analysis of the responses to point out potential security concerns.
The OWASP Top 10 is also a widely recognized standard in the field of web application security, highlighting the most occurring and potentially damaging security issues that organisations face. These risks range from common vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL Injection to more complex threats such as Broken Access Control and Insecure Deserialization.
OWASP ZAP’s alignment with the OWASP Top 10 is significant because it means that the tool is specifically made to identify and address these critical security risks. ZAP is equipped with features and capabilities that allow it to perform scans and tests focused on the vulnerabilities outlined in the OWASP Top 10.
In this presentation, we will go through the characteristics of OWASP ZAP and explore how its capabilities are finely tuned to align with the OWASP Top 10. By using ZAP as part of your security testing strategy, you can proactively address the most occuring web application security concerns and protect your applications and data from these top threats.
Some features provided by OWASP ZAP:
OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a comprehensive security testing tool designed for identifying vulnerabilities in web applications. It offers a wide range of features to help users secure their web applications. Here are some of the key features provided by OWASP ZAP:
- Automated Scanning: ZAP includes an automated scanner that can crawl a web application, discover links, and perform various security scans to identify vulnerabilities like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and more.
2. Manual Explore: ZAP provides an interactive interface for manual testing, allowing ZAP user to actively interact with the application, modify requests, and inspect responses for vulnerabilities.
3. Active Scanning: ZAP provides active scanning which is an approach in web application security testing where the testing tool actively sends crafted requests or payloads to the web application to evaluate its response and identify vulnerabilities. The scope of active scanning is it covers a wide range of attack vectors and security risks, helping testers identify critical vulnerabilities that require immediate attention.
4. Passive Scanning: Passive scanning allows you to identify vulnerabilities and security issues without actively sending any requests to the application. Instead, it observes and analyzes the application’s network traffic as it interacts with clients. It is particularly useful for to detect security concerns and information disclosures without directly interacting with the application.
Note: Active and passive scanning in OWASP ZAP work together to provide a integrated approach to vulnerability testing. Active scanning proactively searches for vulnerabilities, while passive scanning continuously monitors and observes the application’s behaviour, allowing users to detect security issues that might be less expected through active scans alone. Together, these methods help security professionals and developers ensure the security of web applications.
5. Context-Aware Scanning: This lets you target specific parts of a web application for security testing. It’s helps to focus on critical areas of application. You can select which parts of the application to scan, like login pages or payment sections and it scans only the selected areas and this scan reports show issues only within the selected scope.
6. Spider: The Spider tool is a component in OWASP ZAP that automatically navigates through a web application, following links and crawling through its pages. It’s aim is to create a map of the application, identifying all accessible pages, forms, and other content. It helps in understanding the application’s structure, finding less visible parts.
Spider is mainly useful to get an understanding of the application’s layout, find entry points for further testing, and create a base for vulnerability scanning.
7. AJAX Spider: The AJAX Spider is an extension of the Spider tool in ZAP, designed to handle web applications which heavily depend upon AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) for dynamic content loading(without traditional page refreshes…) for example, Single-Page Applications(SPAs). It ensures that these dynamically updated areas are fully explored and included in the application map.
Note: Both Spider and AJAX spider are essential for understanding the application’s layout, finding entry points for vulnerability scanning and broad assessment of web application security.
Scan Results and Review:
After completing scans , the next most important step is to properly review the scan results within the ZAP interface. These results are generated based on the findings and vulnerabilities detected during the scanning process. The review process is an essential part of the web application security assessment, as it gives insights towards security issues and thus it makes security professionals and developers to take appropriate actions to address those issues.
In the ZAP interface, each alert, which represents a security issue or vulnerability, is categorised based on its severity as high, medium or low. With This classification we can prioritise on which issues need to get immediate attention and which issue can be addressed later. In most cases, High-severity alerts represent critical vulnerabilities that require urgent action, whereas low-severity alerts may indicate less critical concerns.
For each alert, ZAP provides detailed information to help users understand and address the identified issue. Some of the details provided are…Name of the alert, HTTP request — response data, description of the issue found, recommendations to fix the issue along with suggesting other external resources which help in the issue’s fixture and evidence which suports the existence of the vulnerability.
Few Alerts provided OWASP ZAP during the scans:
Here are some of the common security alert names that OWASP ZAP may generate during scans, along with examples to help beginners understand the types of vulnerabilities:
1. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS):
— Alert Name: Dangerous Code in User Input
— Example: Imagine a website that doesn’t properly check user comments. If a user posts a comment containing a script that could steal other users’ data, ZAP will raise this alert.
2. SQL Injection:
— Alert Name: Unauthorized Database Access Attempt
— Example: Insecure websites might allow attackers to insert malicious SQL queries into input fields, potentially revealing or altering sensitive data, like user passwords.
3. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF):
— Alert Name: Unauthorised Actions by Trickery
— Example: If a website lacks proper security, an attacker could trick a user into unknowingly performing actions like changing their password without their consent.
4. Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR):
— Alert Name: Unauthorised Data Access
— Example: Suppose a web app allows you to access files by changing a URL parameter. If you can access someone else’s data by modifying the URL, ZAP will identify it.
5. Broken Authentication and Session Management:
— Alert Name: Session Mix-Up Risk
— Example: ZAP might detect that the application mixes up user sessions, allowing one user to see another’s private information after logging in.
6. Missing Security Headers:
— Alert Name: No Protection Against Clickjacking
— Example: ZAP might warn that the application lacks protection against clickjacking, which could lead to users unintentionally taking actions they didn’t intend to.
7. Sensitive Data Exposure:
— Alert Name: Leak of Private Information
— Example: ZAP could identify an issue where a website reveals private information like user emails or addresses, which should remain confidential.
8. XML External Entity (XXE) Injection:
— Alert Name: Unauthorized Data Retrieval via XML
— Example: If an application accepts XML files from users, ZAP might warn that it’s vulnerable to retrieving unauthorised data, such as server files.
9. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF):
— Alert Name: Unauthorized Server Requests
— Example: ZAP might flag an issue where the application allows an attacker to make requests to internal resources or perform actions on the server, which should not be possible.
These simplified examples demonstrate some of the security issues that OWASP ZAP helps you identify and address.
In the next blog, let’s know more about these alerts and how to do our tests.
Hope you found it informative. We shall meet with the next blog and please don’t miss to like this blog if you find it informative and please provide your feedback in the comment section.
