dawnscanner is a source code scanner designed to review your ruby code for security issues.
dawnscanner is able to scan plain ruby scripts (e.g. command line applications) but all its features are unleashed when dealing with web applications source code. dawnscanner is able to scan major MVC (Model View Controller) frameworks, out of the box:
dawnscanner version 1.6.4 has 229 security checks loaded in its knowledge base. Most of them are CVE bulletins applying to gems or the ruby interpreter itself. There are also some check coming from Owasp Ruby on Rails cheatsheet.
When you run dawnscanner on your code it parses your project Gemfile.lock looking for the gems used and it tries to detect the ruby interpreter version you are using or you declared in your ruby version management tool you like most (RVM, rbenv, ...).
Then the tool tries to detect the MVC framework your web application uses and it applies the security check accordingly. There checks designed to match rails application or checks that are appliable to any ruby code.
dawnscanner can also understand the code in your views and to backtrack sinks to spot cross site scripting and sql injections introduced by the code you actually wrote. In the project roadmap this is the code most of the future development effort will be focused on.
dawnscanner security scan result is a list of vulnerabilities with some mitigation actions you want to follow in order to build a stronger web application.
dawnscanner rubygem is cryptographically signed. To be sure the gem you
install hasn’t been tampered, you must first add paolo@dawnscanner.org
public signing certificate as trusted to your gem specific keyring.
$ gem cert --add <(curl -Ls https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thesp0nge/dawnscanner/master/certs/paolo_at_dawnscanner_dot_org.pem)
You can install latest dawnscanner version, fetching it from Rubygems by typing:
$ gem install dawnscanner -P MediumSecurity
The MediumSecurity trust profile will verify signed gems, but allow the installation of unsigned dependencies. This is necessary because not all of dawnscanner’s dependencies are signed, so we cannot use HighSecurity.
In order to install a release candidate version, the gem install command line is the following:
$ gem install dawnscanner --pre -P MediumSecurity
If you want to add dawn to your project Gemfile, you must add the following:
group :development do
gem 'dawnscanner', :require=>false
end
And then upgrade your bundle
$ bundle install
You may want to build it from source, so you have to check it out from github first:
$ git clone https://github.com/thesp0nge/dawnscanner.git
$ cd dawnscanner
$ bundle install
$ rake install
And the dawnscanner gem will be built in a pkg directory and then installed on your system. Please note that you have to manage dependencies on your own this way. It makes sense only if you want to hack the code or something like that.
You can start your code review with dawnscanner very easily. Simply tell the tool where the project root directory.
Underlying MVC framework is autodetected by dawnscanner using target Gemfile.lock file. If autodetect fails for some reason, the tool will complain about it and you have to specify if it's a rails, sinatra or padrino web application by hand.
Basic usage is to specify some optional command line option to fit best your needs, and to specify the target directory where your code is stored.
$ dawn [options] target
In case of need, there is a quick command line option reference running
dawn -h at your OS prompt.
$ dawn -h
Usage: dawn [options] target_directory
Examples:
$ dawn a_sinatra_webapp_directory
$ dawn -C the_rails_blog_engine
$ dawn -C --json a_sinatra_webapp_directory
$ dawn --ascii-tabular-report my_rails_blog_ecommerce
$ dawn --html -F my_report.html my_rails_blog_ecommerce
-r, --rails force dawn to consider the target a rails application
-s, --sinatra force dawn to consider the target a sinatra application
-p, --padrino force dawn to consider the target a padrino application
-G, --gem-lock force dawn to scan only for vulnerabilities affecting dependencies in Gemfile.lock
-a, --ascii-tabular-report cause dawn to format findings using table in ascii art
-j, --json cause dawn to format findings using json
-C, --count-only dawn will only count vulnerabilities (useful for scripts)
-z, --exit-on-warn dawn will return number of found vulnerabilities as exit code
-F, --file filename tells dawn to write output to filename
-c, --config-file filename tells dawn to load configuration from filename
Disable security check family
--disable-cve-bulletins disable all CVE security checks
--disable-code-quality disable all code quality checks
--disable-code-style disable all code style checks
--disable-owasp-ror-cheatsheet disable all Owasp Ruby on Rails cheatsheet checks
--disable-owasp-top-10 disable all Owasp Top 10 checks
Flags useful to query dawnscanner
-S, --search-knowledge-base [check_name] search check_name in the knowledge base
--list-knowledge-base list knowledge-base content
--list-known-families list security check families contained in dawn's knowledge base
--list-known-framework list ruby MVC frameworks supported by dawn
Service flags
-D, --debug enters dawn debug mode
-V, --verbose the output will be more verbose
-v, --version show version information
-h, --help show this help
To include dawnscanner in your rake task list, you simply have to put this line in
your Rakefile
require 'dawn/tasks'
Then executing $ rake -T you will have a dawn:run task you want to
execute.
$ rake -T
...
rake dawn:run # Execute dawnscanner on the current directory
...
You can dump all security checks in the knowledge base this way
$ dawn --list-knowledge-base
Useful in scripts, you can use --search-knowledge-base or -S with
as parameter the check name you want to see if it's implemented as a security
control or not.
$ dawn -S CVE-2013-6421
07:59:30 [*] dawn v1.1.0 is starting up
CVE-2013-6421 found in knowledgebase.
$ dawn -S this_test_does_not_exist
08:02:17 [*] dawn v1.1.0 is starting up
this_test_does_not_exist not found in knowledgebase
As output, dawnscanner will put all security checks that are failed during the scan.
This the result of Codedake::dawnscanner running against a Sinatra 1.4.2 web application wrote for a talk I delivered in 2013 at Railsberry conference.
As you may see, dawnscanner first detects MVC running the application by looking at Gemfile.lock, than it discards all security checks not appliable to Sinatra (49 security checks, in version 1.0, especially designed for Ruby on Rails) and it applies them.
$ dawn ~/src/hacking/railsberry2013
18:40:27 [*] dawn v1.1.0 is starting up
18:40:27 [$] dawn: scanning /Users/thesp0nge/src/hacking/railsberry2013
18:40:27 [$] dawn: sinatra v1.4.2 detected
18:40:27 [$] dawn: applying all security checks
18:40:27 [$] dawn: 109 security checks applied - 0 security checks skipped
18:40:27 [$] dawn: 1 vulnerabilities found
18:40:27 [!] dawn: CVE-2013-1800 check failed
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Severity: high
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Priority: unknown
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Description: The crack gem 0.3.1 and earlier for Ruby does not properly restrict casts of string values, which might allow remote attackers to conduct object-injection attacks and execute arbitrary code, or cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) by leveraging Action Pack support for (1) YAML type conversion or (2) Symbol type conversion, a similar vulnerability to CVE-2013-0156.
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Solution: Please use crack gem version 0.3.2 or above. Correct your gemfile
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Evidence:
18:40:27 [$] dawn: Vulnerable crack gem version found: 0.3.1
18:40:27 [*] dawn is leaving
When you run dawnscanner on a web application with up to date dependencies, it's likely to return a friendly no vulnerabilities found message. Keep it up working that way!
This is dawnscanner running against a Padrino web application I wrote for a scorecard quiz game about application security. Italian language only. Sorry.
18:42:39 [*] dawn v1.1.0 is starting up
18:42:39 [$] dawn: scanning /Users/thesp0nge/src/CORE_PROJECTS/scorecard
18:42:39 [$] dawn: padrino v0.11.2 detected
18:42:39 [$] dawn: applying all security checks
18:42:39 [$] dawn: 109 security checks applied - 0 security checks skipped
18:42:39 [*] dawn: no vulnerabilities found.
18:42:39 [*] dawn is leaving
If you need a fancy HTML report about your scan, just ask it to dawnscanner
with the --html flag used with the --file since I wanto to save the
HTML to disk.
$ dawn /Users/thesp0nge/src/hacking/rt_first_app --html --file report.html
09:00:54 [*] dawn v1.1.0 is starting up
09:00:54 [*] dawn: report.html created (2952 bytes)
09:00:54 [*] dawn is leaving
Project homepage: http://dawnscanner.org
Twitter profile: @dawnscanner
Github repository: https://github.com/thesp0nge/dawnscanner
Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dawnscanner
Feedbacks are great and we really love to hear your voice.
If you're a proud dawnscanner user, if you find it useful, if you integrated it in your release process and if you want to openly support the project you can put your reference here. Just open an issue with a statement saying how do you feel the tool and your company logo if any.
More easily you can drop an email to paolo@dawnscanner.org sending a statement about your success story and I'll put on the website.
Thank you.
saten: first issue posted about a typo in the README
presidentbeef: for his outstanding work that inspired me creating dawn and for double check comparison matrix. Issue #2 is yours :)
marinerJB: for misc bug reports and further ideas
Matteo: for ideas on API and their usage with github.com hooks
Copyright (c) 2013-2016 Paolo Perego paolo@dawnscanner.org
MIT License
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.