Safeguard DAST vs w3af

Safeguard DAST dynamically tests running applications, reporting findings alongside how much discovered attack surface the scan reached. Its graph-aware crawler uses Safeguard SAST call graphs, route tables, and authentication middleware. Endpoint inventories can come from OpenAPI, GraphQL introspection, gRPC reflection, and live traffic samples. Targeted payloads cover SQL, OS command, SSRF, XSS, and deserialization sink classes, with parameter shapes informing generation. Authenticated flows include form authentication, OAuth 2.0 refresh, JWT bearer, session cookies, SAML, and mutual TLS. Listed scan modes are Fast, Deep, Progressive, and Reconnaissance; Reconnaissance sends no probes. Coverage Score explains reached surface and stopping reasons, while stated coverage includes the OWASP Top 10 and API Top 10. JavaScript, JSON, and source maps are analyzed for exposed credentials, routes, endpoints, cloud references, personal data, configuration, and comments. Secret samples are redacted, ownership verification gates requests, and scope, rate, and budget limits constrain them. It supports self-hosted and web use, hybrid deployment, CI integrations, pull-request and IDE workflows, and listed infrastructure analyses. Pricing is freemium: Free plan; paid from $9/mo.

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.