Burp Suite DAST vs w3af

Burp Suite DAST is an automated dynamic scanner for web vulnerabilities, built on the scanning engine used in Burp Suite Professional. Its Chromium-based crawler can handle JavaScript single-page applications, dynamic forms, GraphQL endpoints, and asynchronous loads, while crawling and auditing can run in parallel. Session-aware scans maintain authenticated state using username-password pairs or recorded login sequences. The scanner covers APIs described by Postman Collections, OpenAPI, SOAP, and GraphQL, with native support for several authentication methods. Teams can schedule portfolio scans from a dashboard or run them in CI pipelines, including on pull requests and merges. Deployment options include managed cloud and self-hosted software for Windows and Linux, plus Helm deployment for Kubernetes; self-hosted deployments can operate in air-gapped environments. Access controls include role-based permissions, site groups, audit trails, SAML single sign-on, and group-locked scan policies. Findings include captured requests and confirming responses. Pricing depends on the portfolio and requires contacting PortSwigger; a guided proof-of-concept trial follows a tailored demo and discovery call.

w3af is a free, open-source web application security scanner for vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. It can identify more than 200 vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and OS command injection. Its workflow starts with crawler plugins that find URLs and injection points, continues with audit plugins that check for vulnerabilities, and can use attack plugins to exploit findings. Other plugin types cover infrastructure detection, request and response analysis, output, brute force, request modification, and evasion.

Users can scan and analyze results in a GTK graphical interface or a console. Web application payloads can interact with Metasploit when an exploit provides exec() capability. Developers can use the REST API from development languages and run it in Docker; scripts and the API also support automation. The project documents Linux and macOS installation, including running in Docker without installing w3af dependencies. It is available for Linux, macOS, web, API, and self-hosted deployment. REST API traffic over HTTP is unencrypted, so the documentation recommends added protection such as an SSL proxy for publicly reachable deployments.