Securing an AEM installation requires to continuously check the overall stack. Any failure in one of the involved layers may likely affect a totally different technical layer or even the whole platform.
The purpose if this project is to simplify continuous automated security testing of Adobe Experience Manager and especially the AEM Dispatcher. If further enables projects to customize the actual test behaviou to specific project requirements and to easily add additional project specific checks.
Pickaxe is scriptable web application test framework with a customizable http scan engine and a large predefined set of security checks for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) projects.
It can be easily customized and extended either through a groovy based DSL or using YAML based scan and check configurations.
The scanner can be integrated
- into a Maven project,
- started from Docker container
- or simply called via its commandline interface.
Pickaxe is fully customizable without having to touch or change the project's core and is designed to be integrated into build and CICD ecosystems.
But Pickaxe is not necessarily limited to AEM only and could be used to scan other web applications and API services.
What is in for my project if I decide to use Pickaxe?
- More than 35 built-in Dispatcher and AEM Security Checks
- Easy remote or local execution
- Commandline Interface
- Maven build integration as a Maven plugin
- Easy Jenkins integration
- Fully configurable and customizable scans and checks for any project need
- Groovy Configuration DSL
- YAML Configuration
- Authentication support
- Fast and scalable through async and parallel scan execution
- Multiple report handlers and formats (html, json, console or just-break-the-build)
Please check Pickaxe Scans Module Readme for a list of all supported attack vectors.
If you want to build and run it locally, just run a simple maven build from the root of the project and trigger the commandline version.
mvn clean install
java -jar pickaxe-scans/target/pickaxe-security-scanner.jar --url http://<your target>/path-to-a-page --output /Users/<youruser>/scans
Alternatively pull the docker image and run it from via docker:
docker pull ghcr.io/netcentric/pickaxe-security-scanner:latest
docker run --rm -it -v /Users/<your-home>/temp/output:/app/output ghcr.io/netcentric/pickaxe-security-scanner:latest --url http://host.docker.internal/content/we-retail/us/en.html
Please check our specific documentation for details on how to run the scanner.
Before starting to deep dive into advanced topics, it is crucial to understand the domain specific terminology and meaning of certain buzzwords.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| scan | The term scan refers to a scan configuration which configures the target and the parameters to use when scanning the target. |
| check | The term check refers to a single configuration which tells the scanner how to attack a certain vulnerability. |
| reporter | A reporter is a report handlers or writer which is used to process the scan results and acts according to it's implementation. It can either print output or terminate further processing when issues are detected. |
| config dsl | Configuration language to influence the runtime behaviour of the scan angine usig an external configuration. |
Pickaxe uses either a Groovy Configuration DSL or a YAML config to allow customization or configuration of the scan process or to define custom checks. The Groovy DSL refers to the scan engines domain specific configuration language, which is used to define most buildin scans or checks. The YAML config is a way simpler format which allows quick customizations without needing to now any internals.
- The scan engine interprets and understands it and acts accordingly.
- It can be loaded via filesystem and dynamically extend the capabilities of the scanner.
- If you want to keep it simpler, then just go for the YAML based configs, but be aware the groovy DSL is more powerful.
If you have any questions which are still answered after reading the documentation feel free to raise them in the discussion forum.
Contributions are highly welcome in the form of issue reports, pull request or providing help in our discussion forum.
If you want to contribute or develop on top of pickaxe please have a look into the following documentation chapters.
Pickaxe is licensed under the Eclipse Public License - v 1.0.