Offensive Security

Automated application scanning: handling complicated logins with AppScan (only!)

We put up a blog post two days ago demonstrating how to get IBM Rational AppScan to perform a complex login routine by chaining it together with BurpSuite. Ory Segal (@orysegal) from IBM Rational reached out with a simpler method to handle this natively in AppScan. It involves configuring AppScan to add a custom parameter to each request. For the sample case in the authexamples GitHub repository it would be handled like this:

This then handles the same gymnastics we were doing with BurpSuite’s inline editing before – resulting in a successful login sequence and a valid session:

Fun stuff! Many thanks to Ory for sending this along – we really appreciate the insight. For other scanner tool vendors – how would YOU recommend your users accomplish this same task? Either put up a blog post about it and send me the link or if you send me some notes and a screenshot or two I am happy to do it.

Also I’ve been talking with our web application pen test folks to get more examples to add to the authexamples GitHub repository. If you have any suggestions please send them my way.

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