Welcome
Welcome to the documentation for HCL® AppScan® Source.
What's New
Explore these new features that have been added to AppScan® Source - and note any features and capabilities that have been deprecated in this release.
Installing
Learn how to install, upgrade, and activate HCL® AppScan® Source.
Configuring
Learn how to configure applications, folders, and projects, and set attributes and properties in HCL® AppScan® Source.
Administering
Learn how to administer user accounts and permissions, audit user activity, and manage integrations in HCL® AppScan® Source.
Scanning
This section explains how to scan your source code and manage assessments in HCL® AppScan® Source.
Triage and analysis
Grouping similar findings allows security analysts or IT auditors to segment and triage source code problems. This section explains how to triage AppScan® Source assessments and analyze results.
Reporting
Security analysts and risk managers can access reports of select findings or a series of audit reports that measure compliance with software security best practices and regulatory requirements. This section explains how to create reports of aggregate finding data.
Extending product function
Learn how to extend the product to meet specific development requirements.
- Customizing the vulnerability database and pattern rules
  This section describes how to customize the database and integrate customized vulnerabilities and other routines into scans.
  - Extending the AppScan® Source Security Knowledgebase
    This section describes how to customize the database and integrate customized vulnerabilities and other routines into scans. Custom rules tailor the AppScan® Source Security Knowledgebase (or vulnerability database) to your specific security standards and apply those standards consistently across your enterprise.
  - Customizing input/output tracing through AppScan® Source trace
    Some applications (particularly web applications) require input/output tracing to identify security vulnerabilities related to SQL injection, command injection, and cross-site scripting. Through AppScan® Source trace, you can specify a validation routine that, if used, eliminates the reporting of any vulnerability. All other outputs are marked as vulnerabilities if input has not been validated.
  - Customizing with pattern-based rules
    AppScan® Source pattern-based scanning is an analysis of your source code based on customized search criteria. Pattern-based scanning is similar to grep (grep searches one or more files for a given character string or pattern). Auditors or security analysts performing triage might use pattern-based scanning to search for specific patterns in specific applications or in a project. Once you define a pattern as a vulnerability type, a scan of your source code identifies the pattern as a vulnerability. When AppScan Source finds a match, the item appears in the findings table. The out-of-the-box AppScan Source rule library includes predefined rules and rule sets (collections of rules).
- Extending the application server import framework
  AppScan® Source allows you to import Java™ applications from Apache Tomcat and WebSphere® Application Server Liberty profile. You can import Java applications from other application servers by extending the application server import framework, as explained in this topic.
- HCL® AppScan® Source for Development (Eclipse Plug-in)
  With AppScan® Source for Development, you can work in your existing development environment and perform security vulnerability analysis on Java and IBM® MobileFirst Platform projects. Security analysis lets you pinpoint vulnerabilities in the source code and eliminate them entirely with AppScan Source Security Knowledgebase remediation assistance.
Reference
Review reference information for HCL® AppScan® Source, including using utilities, plug-ins, and APIs.
Troubleshooting and support
Self-help information, resources, and tools to help you troubleshoot issues while using HCL® AppScan® Source.

Customizing the vulnerability database and pattern rules

This section describes how to customize the database and integrate customized vulnerabilities and other routines into scans.

There are multiple stages in the scanning process:

A language-specific scan is run using the vulnerability database (or AppScan® Source Security Knowledgebase).
Trace is run using the vulnerability database.
A pattern-based scan is run using pattern rules from the global pattern rule library.

You can use custom rules to tailor the AppScan® Source Security Knowledgebase to your specific security standards and apply those standards consistently across your enterprise. You can also customize pattern rules.