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Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

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WARNING: The DAST proxy-based analyzer was deprecated in GitLab 16.9 and removed in GitLab 17.3. This change is a breaking change. For instructions on how to migrate from the DAST proxy-based analyzer to DAST version 5, see the proxy-based migration guide. For instructions on how to migrate from the DAST version 4 browser-based analyzer to DAST version 5, see the browser-based migration guide.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) runs automated penetration tests to find vulnerabilities in your web applications and APIs as they are running. DAST automates a hacker's approach and simulates real-world attacks for critical threats such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection (SQLi), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) to uncover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that other security tools cannot detect.

DAST is completely language-neutral and examines your application from the outside in. DAST scans can be run in a CI/CD pipeline, on a schedule, or run manually on demand. Using DAST during the software development lifecycle enables you to uncover vulnerabilities in your application before deployment in production. DAST is a foundational component of software security and should be used together with the other GitLab security tools to provide a comprehensive security assessment of your applications.

For an overview, see Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST).

GitLab DAST

GitLab DAST and API security analyzers are proprietary runtime tools, which provide broad security coverage for modern-day web applications and APIs.

Use the DAST analyzers according to your needs:

  • To scan web-based applications, including single page web applications, for known vulnerabilities, use the DAST analyzer.
  • To scan APIs for known vulnerabilities, use the API security analyzer. Technologies such as GraphQL, REST, and SOAP are supported.

Analyzers follow the architectural patterns described in Secure your application. Each analyzer can be configured in the pipeline by using a CI/CD template and runs the scan in a Docker container. Scans output a DAST report artifact which GitLab uses to determine discovered vulnerabilities based on differences between scan results on the source and target branches.

View scan results

Detected vulnerabilities appear in merge requests, the pipeline security tab, and the vulnerability report.

NOTE: A pipeline may consist of multiple jobs, including SAST and DAST scanning. If any job fails to finish for any reason, the security dashboard doesn't show DAST scanner output. For example, if the DAST job finishes but the SAST job fails, the security dashboard doesn't show DAST results. On failure, the analyzer outputs an exit code.

List URLs scanned

When DAST completes scanning, the merge request page states the number of URLs scanned. Select View details to view the web console output which includes the list of scanned URLs.