HCL® AppScan® Source delivers maximum value to every user in your organization who plays a role in software security. Whether a security analyst, quality assurance professional, developer, or executive, the AppScan Source products deliver the functionality, flexibility, and power you need - right to your desktop.

Before you begin to use or administer AppScan® Source, you should become familiar with fundamental AppScan Source concepts. This section defines basic AppScan Source terminology and concepts. Subsequent chapters repeat these definitions to help you understand their context in AppScan Source for Analysis.

This section describes how AppScan® Source for Analysis fits into the total AppScan Source solution and provides a basis for understanding the software assurance workflow.

Most AppScan® Source products and components require a connection to an AppScan Enterprise Server. The server provides centralized user management capabilities and a mechanism for sharing assessments. All user management occurs in AppScan Enterprise.

Compliance with United States government security and information technology regulations help to remove sales impediments and roadblocks. It also provides a proof point to prospects worldwide that HCL® is working to make their products the most secure in the industry. This topic lists the standards and guidelines that AppScan® Source supports.

Accessibility affects users with physical disabilities, such as restricted mobility or limited vision. Accessibility issues can impede the ability to use software products successfully. This topic outlines known AppScan® Source accessibility issues and their workarounds.

This section describes three different deployment models and the components that comprise each model.

When installing AppScan® Source, it is important to follow the correct installation workflow. These topics guide you through the workflow involved in some sample installation scenarios.

This section describes advanced installation options and activation procedures.

The AppScan® Source custom installation wizard is used for creating silent installers.

You can remove AppScan® Source from the Windows™ Control Panel or with a Linux™ uninstall script. The AppScan Source uninstall does not remove or back up an installed Oracle database. Deleting the AppScan Source user from an Oracle instance is a manual database administrative task.

Before you scan, you must configure applications, folders, and projects. This section explains the Application Discovery Assistant, New Application Wizard, New Folder Wizard, and the New Project Wizard. You will learn how to configure attributes for AppScan® Source for Analysis. In addition, this section teaches you how to add existing applications and projects for scanning - and how to add files to projects.

Preferences are personal choices about the appearance and operation of AppScan® Source for Analysis.

This section explains user management, permissions, application and project registration, and port configuration.

AppScan® Source offers a convenient location for auditing user activity. The Audit view logs events such as authentication to the AppScan Enterprise Server, the creation of new users, and the creation of new rules in the database.

Most AppScan® Source products and components require a connection to an AppScan Enterprise Server. The server provides centralized user management capabilities and a mechanism for sharing assessments. All user management occurs in AppScan Enterprise.

To add an AppScan® Source user that will be authenticated via LDAP, you must have configured the AppScan Enterprise Server user repository to use an LDAP repository.

AppScan® Source applications, folders, and projects have corresponding files that maintain configuration information required for scanning, as well as triage customization. These files should reside in the same directory as the source code, since configuration information (dependencies, compiler options, and so forth) required to build the projects is very similar to that required for AppScan Source to scan them successfully. Best practice includes managing these files with your source control system.

You can scan an Eclipse workspace, project, or file. This includes scanning Java™ (including Android), JavaServer Pages (JSP), and IBM® MobileFirst Platform projects.

The My Assessments view contains a list of assessments (the currently-opened assessment, along with any assessments that you have saved). In this view, you can open, delete, save, rename, or compare assessments. When a scan completes or you open a saved assessment, the assessment appears in the My Assessments view. My Assessments displays a table of open or saved assessments, and identifies a published or modified assessment. Removing an assessment from this view (without saving or publishing it) permanently deletes that assessment.

If you have a subscription to HCL AppScan on Cloud at HCL Cloud Marketplace, you can submit AppScan® Source assessments for analysis there. Assessments from AppScan Source Versions 9.0 or higher are supported - and the number of scans that you can submit depends on your AppScan on Cloud subscription.

AppScan® Source offers two publishing options. You can publish assessments to the AppScan Source Database, for the purpose of storing and sharing assessments. Or, if your AppScan Enterprise Server has been installed with the Enterprise Console option, you can publish assessments to it. The AppScan Enterprise Console offers a variety of tools for working with your assessments - such as reporting features, issue management, trend analysis, and dashboards.

AppScan® Source scans source code for vulnerabilities and produces findings. Findings are the vulnerabilities identified during a scan, and the result of a scan is an assessment. You can open a saved assessment from AppScan Source for Development or AppScan Source for Analysis. After you scan, you can save the assessment to a file. Then you can open the assessment again at any time. Assessments are saved as filename.ozasmt.

When assessments are removed from the My Assessments view, they are not removed from your local file system. If an assessment is removed from the view, it can be added back with the Open Assessment action.

When saving assessments or bundles, or publishing assessments, AppScan® Source for Analysis may suggest that you create a variable to replace absolute paths (without variables, AppScan Source for Analysis writes absolute paths to the assessment file to reference items such as source files). When you configure variables for absolute paths, you facilitate the sharing of assessments on multiple computers. It is recommended that you use variables when sharing assessments.

The Findings view, or any view with findings, displays a findings tree (a hierarchical grouping of assessment criteria) and a findings table for each scan. The item that is selected in the findings tree determines the findings that are presented in the table.

The triage process includes manipulating findings through bundles, filters, and exclusions - and comparing assessment results.

This example describes an AppScan® Source triage workflow used by a security analyst. Triage workflow may vary according to your business needs.

AppScan® Source for Analysis reports on all potential security vulnerabilities and may produce many thousands of findings for a medium to large code base. When you scan, you may find that the findings list contains items that are not important to you. To remove certain findings from the Findings view, you can choose a predefined filter or you can create your own filter. A filter specifies the criteria that determine which findings to remove from view.

After a scan, you may decide that some findings are irrelevant to your current work, and you do not want them visible in the findings table when you triage the scan results. These exclusions (or excluded findings) no longer appear in the Findings view and the assessment metrics update immediately with the changed results. Filter and bundle exclusions added to a configuration only take effect on subsequent scans.

Bundles (a grouping mechanism for findings) allow you to import a snapshot of findings from AppScan® Source for Analysis to AppScan Source for Development. Once findings are in bundles, you can use AppScan Source for Development to open the project that contains the bundle, import the bundle, or open a saved bundle file (file_name.ozbdl).

Fix groups are a new approach to managing, triaging, and resolving issues found in static analysis scans. After running a static scan, AppScan® Source organizes issues into fix groups based on vulnerability type and the required remediation task.

Modified findings are findings that have changed vulnerability types, classifications, or severities - or that have annotations. The Modified Findings view displays these findings for the current application (the application that is active as a result of opening an assessment for it). In the My Assessments view (available only in AppScan® Source for Analysis), the Modified column indicates if a finding has changed in the current assessment.

Use the Diff Assessments action or the AppScanDelta utility to compare assessments. When two assessments are compared, the differences between the two are displayed in the Assessment Diff view or in an .ozasmt file. The results summarize new, fixed/missing, and common findings.

To augment your analysis results, you can create custom findings. These are user-created findings that AppScan® Source for Analysis adds to the currently-open assessment or selected application. Custom findings impact assessment metrics and can be included in reports. Once created, a custom finding is automatically included in future scans of the application.

AppScan® Source alerts you to security errors or common design flaws and assists in the resolution process. The AppScan Source Security Knowledgebase - and internal or external code editors - help with this process.

Some annotations or attributes that are used to decorate code are processed during scans. When a supported annotation or attribute is found in your code during a scan, the information is used to mark the decorated method as a tainted callback. A method marked as a tainted callback is treated as if all of its arguments have tainted data. This results in more findings with traces. Supported annotations and attributes are listed in this help topic.

With AppScan® Source trace, you can verify input validation and encoding that meets your software security policies. You can look at the findings that produce input/output traces and mark methods as validation and encoding routines, sources or sinks, callbacks, or taint propagators.

In the Report Editor, you create report templates used to generate custom reports.

Export finds in CSV or SARIF format from the findings list of a scan.

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

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.

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.

Ounce/Make is a tool that automates the importing of configuration information into AppScan® Source from build environments that use makefile. Ounce/Make eliminates the need to import configuration information from makefiles manually; this the recommended method of configuring these projects.

The CLI is an interface to core AppScan® Source functionality.

This section describes how to use Ounce/Ant, an AppScan® Source build utility that integrates AppScan Source and Apache Ant. Integrating Ounce/Ant with your Ant environment helps you automate builds and code assessments.

The Data Access API provides access to AppScan® Source-generated assessment results, including findings and finding details. It also provides access to assessment metrics such as analysis date and time, lines of code, V-density, and number of findings.

Learn common product terminology.

Troubleshooting is the process of finding and eliminating the cause of a problem. Whenever you have a problem with your software, the troubleshooting process begins as soon as you ask yourself what happened?

If the self-help resources have not provided a resolution to your problem, you can contact HCL® Software Support. HCL Software Support provides assistance in resolving product issues.