WebGoat 8: A deliberately insecure Web Application

Introduction

WebGoat is a deliberately insecure web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons.

This program is a demonstration of common server-side application flaws. The exercises are intended to be used by people to learn about application security and penetration testing techniques.

WARNING 1: While running this program your machine will be extremely vulnerable to attack. You should disconnect from the Internet while using this program. WebGoat's default configuration binds to localhost to minimize the exposure.

WARNING 2: This program is for educational purposes only. If you attempt these techniques without authorization, you are very likely to get caught. If you are caught engaging in unauthorized hacking, most companies will fire you. Claiming that you were doing security research will not work as that is the first thing that all hackers claim.

Run Instructions:

1. Standalone

Download the latest WebGoat release from https://github.com/WebGoat/WebGoat/releases

java -jar webgoat-server-8.0.0.VERSION.jar [--server.port=8080] [--server.address=localhost]

By default WebGoat starts on port 8080 with --server.port you can specify a different port. With server.address you can bind it to a different address (default localhost)

If you use Java 9 or higher you need to run WebGoat as follows:

java --add-modules java.xml.bind -jar webgoat-server-8.0.0.VERSION.jar

2. Run using Docker

Every release is also published on DockerHub.

Using docker-compose

The easiest way to start WebGoat as a Docker container is to use the docker-compose.yml file from our Github repository. This will start both containers and it also takes care of setting up the connection between WebGoat and WebWolf.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WebGoat/WebGoat/develop/docker-compose.yml | docker-compose -f - up

Important: the current directory on your host will be mapped into the container for keeping state.

Using the docker-compose file will simplify getting WebGoat and WebWolf up and running.

3. Run from the sources

Prerequisites:

• Java 8
• Maven > 3.2.1
• Your favorite IDE
• Git, or Git support in your IDE

Open a command shell/window:

git clone git@github.com:WebGoat/WebGoat.git

Now let's start by compiling the project.

cd WebGoat
git checkout <<branch_name>>
mvn clean install

Now we are ready to run the project. WebGoat 8.x is using Spring-Boot.

mvn -pl webgoat-server spring-boot:run

... you should be running webgoat on localhost:8080/WebGoat momentarily

To change IP address add the following variable to WebGoat/webgoat-container/src/main/resources/application.properties file

server.address=x.x.x.x

Vagrant

We supply a complete environment using Vagrant, to run WebGoat with Vagrant you must first have Vagrant and Virtualbox installed.

   $ cd WebGoat/webgoat-images/vagrant-training
   $ vagrant up

Once the provisioning is complete login to the Virtualbox with username vagrant and password vagrant. WebGoat and WebWolf will automatically start when you login to this image.

Building a new Docker image

NOTE: Travis will create a new Docker image automatically when making a new release.

WebGoat now has Docker support for x86 and ARM (raspberry pi).

Docker on x86

On x86 you can build a container with the following commands:

cd WebGoat/
mvn install
cd webgoat-server
docker build -t webgoat/webgoat-8.0 .
docker tag webgoat/webgoat-8.0 webgoat/webgoat-8.0:8.0
docker login
docker push webgoat/webgoat-8.0

Docker on ARM (Raspberry Pi)

On a Raspberry Pi (it has yet been tested with a Raspberry Pi 3 and the hypriot Docker image) you need to build JFFI for ARM first. This is needed by the docker-maven-plugin (see here):

sudo apt-get install build-essential
git clone https://github.com/jnr/jffi.git
cd jffi
ant jar
cd build/jni
sudo cp libjffi-1.2.so /usr/lib

When you have done this you can build the Docker container using the following commands:

cd WebGoat/
mvn install
cd webgoat-server
mvn docker:build -Drpi=true
docker tag webgoat/webgoat-8.0 webgoat/webgoat-8.0:8.0
docker login
docker push webgoat/webgoat-8.0