Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 10.4.
If you are using GitLab CI/CD, you can analyze your running web application(s) for known vulnerabilities using Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST).
Overview
Running static checks on your code is the first step to detect vulnerabilities that can put the security of your code at risk. Yet, once deployed, your application is exposed to a new category of possible attacks, such as cross-site scripting or broken authentication flaws. This is where Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) comes into place.
You can take advantage of DAST by either including the CI job in
your existing .gitlab-ci.yml file or by implicitly using
Auto DAST
that is provided by Auto DevOps.
Going a step further, GitLab can show the vulnerability list right in the merge request widget area.
Use cases
It helps you automatically find security vulnerabilities in your running web applications while you are developing and testing your applications.
How it works
First of all, you need to define a job named dast in your .gitlab-ci.yml
file. Check how the dast job should look like.
In order for the report to show in the merge request, there are two prerequisites:
- the specified job must be named
dast - the resulting report must be named
gl-dast-report.jsonand uploaded as an artifact
The dast job will perform an analysis on the running web application, the
resulting JSON file will be uploaded as an artifact, and GitLab will then check
this file and show the information inside the merge request.
By clicking on one of the detected linked vulnerabilities, you will be able to see the details and the URL(s) affected.
