With more web applications exposing RESTful (or REST) APIs for ease of use, flexibility and scalability, it has become more important for web application security teams to test and secure those APIs. But APIs (including REST APIs) introduce some behaviors that make it difficult for web application scanners to test them for vulnerabilities.
New features in Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS) overcome these difficulties.
Qualys Web Application Scanning 4.9 has added the capability to run web app vulnerability scans on AJAX applications that use JSON input. Specifically, WAS 4.9 can test for SQL injection (SQLi), local file injection (LFI) and PHP command injection. Many web application scanners are capable of detecting SQL injection, LFI, PHP command injection and other vulnerabilities in web applications that use standard GET/POST requests, but they fail to find the same in applications that use JSON input in POST data. To analyze and detect vulnerability in JSON requests, WAS 4.9 added the capability to execute some AJAX scripts in automatic scanning without manual intervention. This capability relies on the SmartScan feature, which customers need to enable in their subscriptions.