3

We are trying to integrate OWASP ZAP scans to our Build Cycle. When a new build reaches the QA team, they run an automation tool similar to Selenium, which opens a Firefox web-browser in a Windows machine and runs their test cases. Being completely new to ZAP, this is what I have setup now to get the scan results from those tests regularly.

  1. Installed the ZAP tool in a Linux machine and it is running in daemon mode with an api-key on port 8080

  2. Made changes in Firefox settings in the Automation Test machine so that each new Firefox profiles opened by Selenium will have the proxy pointed to <IP_of_ZAP_Machine:8080>.

  3. A cronjob will run every midnight that does the following in this order:

    • Collects the URLs scanned by calling the URL http://IP_of_ZAP_Machine:8080/XML/core/view/sites/?zapapiformat=XML

    • Generates a list of URLs which shows alerts for each 'sites' obtained from the previous step.

      Example: http://IP_of_ZAP_Machine:8080/HTML/core/view/alerts/?zapapiformat=HTML&baseurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&start=&count= for the results of scan on https://www.example.com

    • Downloads the scan results in HTML format by calling all the URLs from the above step and putting all the HTMLs in a ZIP file.

    • Emails the ZIP file to my team.

    • Loads a new session so that the results e-mailed next midnight will contain results only from the previous midnight. The new session is loaded using the URL http://IP_of_ZAP_Machine:8080/JSON/core/action/newSession/?zapapiformat=JSON&apikey=<my_api_key>&name=${newsessionname}&overwrite=

While I am getting the scan results as expected everyday, the questions is: Am I doing it right? Is there a more correct or established way of doing this?

Note: Results from all the steps are logged into a log file for future verification.

2

2 Answers 2

4

Is it working for you? If so then yes, you are probably doing it right ;) ZAP is a very flexible tool and many people use it in different ways. One question - are you restarting the ZAP instance, eg for each scan or after a period of time? If not you may run into issues as ZAP is not really designed to be run as a long running process. We are working to change that, but we're not there yet.

2
  • Glad to hear from your @Simon Bennetts:) We are not restarting ZAP as of now. The current ZAP instance has been up for 4 days now. What is the recommended frequency of restarts?
    – Sreeraj
    Apr 10, 2017 at 12:27
  • 1
    I've just had a chat with one of the other core team and they have done more testing on this than I have :) As long as you are starting a new ZAP session before each scan you may well be ok. Personally I'd like you to not restart it at all and then see how long it stay up for :D And let me know of course ;) It would be worth checking the size of the ZAP process every so often, at least to start with. Or you could just restart it once a week (for example) if you want to play it safe. Apr 10, 2017 at 13:12
1

There is also a ZAP plugin for Jenkins that works nicely for the kind of automated testing you are trying to do.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .