AST allows software developers and AppSec teams to identify software vulnerabilities early in the SDLC, before the it is deployed. Here’s what you need to know.
In 1988, a computer science student at Cornell University wrote an experimental program designed to gauge the size of the internet. The consequences transformed the way the tech world viewed cybersecurity.
The “Morris Worm” – named after the aforementioned student, Robert Tappan Morris – unintentionally crashed over 6000 systems at NASA, the US Dept of Defense, Harvard, MIT, and other major government and educational research institutions. In 1988, that represented about 10% of the internet. Morris wasn’t acting maliciously, but his actions inspired a new generation of threat actors, ready to exploit the same vulnerabilities to deliver destructive payloads. Before 1988, security largely took a back seat in software development and connected infrastructure. All that was about to change forever.
Early software development was heavily skewed towards functionality, reliability, and efficiency. Manual processes dominated, and security was often an afterthought. That was fine until the Morris Worm highlighted the new reality that global, connected systems could be globally vulnerable. Tools designed to facilitate more secure software development emerged and evolved to meet these new, changing needs. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) was one of them. An evolved version of it is still in used in secure software development lifecycles (SDLCs) today.
Here’s what you need to know about modern SAST, and where it fits in today’s AppSec environment.
What is Static Application Security Testing (SAST)?
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is a proactive security testing approach that analyzes application source code, bytecode, or binary files to identify vulnerabilities inat the early stages of software development. Because it operates in a non-runtime environment (i.e., static code analysisin its static state), SAST can detect vulnerabilities before the application is built and/or running.
Some of the common vulnerabilities SAST detects include:
- SQL injection
- Cross-site scripting (XSS)
- Buffer overflows
- Insecure APIs
- Hard-coded credentials
Integrating SAST tools into Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines allows developers to automatically scan code for security vulnerabilities, in real time. This early remediation reduces the cost, complexity, and effort required to address security flaws later in the SDLC.
While tools like Software Composition Analysis (SCA) support broad use cases – from vulnerability management through license compliance and SBOM generation – SAST excels’s niche is in at identifying security vulnerabilities in proprietary and/or custom code.
Did you know?
The global SAST market is projected to reach $1.1bn by 2032, expanding at a CAGR of 7% between 2024-2032.
Why SAST is Important
SAST is important because it allows developers and security teams to identify vulnerabilities early in the SDLC, before the software is deployed.
Early detection using SAST plays a crucial role in minimizing unanticipated impacts further down the SDLC, and across the software supply chain. Its automated processes reduce the need for manual security checks, taking friction out of the software development process.
What Cybersecurity Challenges Does SAST Solve?
Few software applications today are developed from scratch; in our world of accelerated software development lifecycles (SDLCs), the reuse of code, libraries, and other components are facts of life. Why should development teams keep starting over when pre-built, proven libraries exist?
The use and reuse of proprietary and custom code components has brought many benefits but has also introduced risk: much of today’s software supply chain contains code that has been around for many years, often without update. Unfortunately, research shows that 95% of organizations have at least one high, critical, or apocalyptic risk within their software supply chain, with the average organization having nine.
SAST’s focus on source code analysis of analyzing proprietary and/or custom code created by development teams helps prevent vulnerabilities from being introduced/reintroduced during code reuse. It helps ensure that developers’ contribution to the software supply chain is more secure and less likely to introduce risk. In this way, Static Application Software Testing plays an important role in strengthening overall supply chain security, improving security posture by reducing the potential for risks from both custom software development practices and external dependencies.
What Are the Key Benefits of SAST?
One of the key benefits of Static Application Security Testing is that it can analyze every line of code in an application, making it truly comprehensive. On the downside, because it can deep dive into code, SAST can yield false positives and a lot of alerts (see “Getting AppSec priorities right” sidebar below), requiring human expertise and the use of complementary security tools to maximize the insights.
How does SAST help improve overall Application Security? Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of SAST:
- Detect vulnerabilities early
Performing code security analysis Analyzing code before compiling and running it allows developers to detect and fix vulnerabilities in an application security risks before they become an issue. This prevents problems from compounding, saving time, effort, and money further along the SDLC.
- Improve code quality
Continuous testing Regular use of SAST throughout the development process ensures higher quality code, encouraging developers to adopt a security mindset from day one, resulting in more secure (and stable) applications.
- Secure the software supply chain
By analyzing proprietary and custom code components for security weaknesses, potential vulnerabilities, SAST helps to reduce the risk of introducing security flaws via external dependencies.
- Integration with development tools and processes
By integrating SAST into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can drive continuous security assessment throughout the development process. Integration enables the automated scanning of code changes, allowing rapid feedback and maintaining high levels of security with minimal impact on development times.
- Support risk prioritization
AppSec teams are in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of alerts and an ever-expanding catalog of vulnerabilities. The most effective way to prevent this security debt is to help teams to focus on the 5% of vulnerabilities that are most relevant to theyour organization’s specific environment. SAST can help with this: the most effective testing solutions tools generate detailed reports that help AppSec and developer teams to determine the severity and potential impact of detected vulnerabilities, so they can prioritize accordingly.
- Comply with regulations
Many SAST tools provide pre-configured rules and checks specific to the most important industry standards and regulations, including: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Static analysis AST also helps developers to build code that complies with software standards and best practices, such as CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
Bottom line: SAST tools scan code for vulnerabilities, and address software security issues. Because it provides detailed insights into vulnerabilities, SAST supports developers in adopting a more security-minded approach to software development.
Getting AppSec Priorities Right with SAST
Research has shown that a single SAST can generate warnings in vulnerable functions for 52% of vulnerability-contributing commits (VCCs). The same study showed that prioritizing functions flagged by SAST improved precision by 12%, and recall by 5.6%, while reducing false positives by 13%. However…
76% of alerts identifiedwarnings in the study were found to be irrelevant to the actual vulnerabilities, underlining the need for a comprehensive, risk-based approach to application testingAppSec, where defenders can focus on the 5% of vulnerabilities that matter most, rather than becoming overwhelmed by the noise of constant, less relevant alerts.
How does SAST Help with Software Supply Chain Security?
SAST tools have become an integral part of the CI/CD pipeline, as developer and AppSec teams shift towards embedding security into the software development lifecycle as part of a ‘secure by design’ approach to create a more secure software supply chain.
Some of the ways SAST helps mitigate software supply chain risk include:
- Securing custom and proprietary code
SAST’s focus is on proprietary and custom code created by your development teams. By identifying risks such as insecure coding practices, logic flaws, and exploitable weaknesses such as XSS, code analysis it prevents organizations from introducing risk to the supply chain.
- Detecting vulnerabilities early
When SAST is integrated into CI/CD pipelines, it supports a “shift left” approach, addressing vulnerabilities during development by automating scanning at every commit or build.
- Complementing other AppSec tools
SAST works hand-in-hand with other code analysis tools AppSec tools, notably Software Composition Analysis (SCA), to provide comprehensive coverage of proprietary, custom, third-party, and open-source code.
- Automating supply chain security processes
SAST tools can automate some of the key aspects of supply chain security: source code scanning, reporting, and enforcing policies. Automation reduces friction in remediation processes, and helps ensure consistent application of security policies and standards across the SDLC.
- Mitigating the risks from complex dependencies
Modern applications are complex, with numerous dependencies. SAST helps manage this, identifying vulnerabilities in custom and proprietary code that interact with external libraries or APIs.
As part of a comprehensive AppSec platform strategy, Static Application Security Testing plays a crucial role in mitigating risks posed by both internal software development practices and proprietary, external dependencies.
Let’s take a look at some of the tools SAST complements.
SAST and SCA: Complementary AppSec Tools
First things first: What is Software Composition Analysis (SCA)? It’s a tool for detecting and managing vulnerabilities and licensing issues across the open-source and third-party libraries chain. SCA code scanning analyzes the components that make up an application, helping AppSec and DevOps teams identify and manage vulnerabilities detected:
- Static SCA uses build manifest files to analyze components in source code.
- Dynamic SCA scans binary code, which can be accessed in testing or production, meaning components can be checked in real time.
This information is used to create a software bill of materials (SBOM), a detailed inventory of an application’s contents and dependencies. The SBOM is compared against known common vulnerabilities and exposures (‘CVEs’, including those on the National Vulnerability Database), as well as other vulnerabilities and known exploit trackers, after which present vulnerabilities can be scored and prioritized based on the organization’s needs.
SAST vs SCA: What’s the Difference?
The main difference between SCA and SAST is that SCA focuses on open-source and third-party software components, while SAST analyzes proprietary and custom source code.
In addition, because SCA analyzes binaries and dependencies, it can usually work without needing direct access to source code. SAST, on the other hand, needs access to source code to analyze it.
Software Composition Analysis and Static Application Security Testing tools are aligned around their ultimate goal: securing software development processes and helping eliminate known vulnerabilities and potential vulnerabilities from code. But they differ in key ways:
Focus and scope:
- SCA is focused on analyzing open-source dependencies and third-party components.
- SAST analyzes proprietary and custom source code.
The vulnerabilities they detect:
- SCA identifies known vulnerabilities in open-source libraries and components.
- SAST detects weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities in proprietary or in-house developed code.
Code access requirements:
- SCA analyzes binaries and dependencies, meaning it can usually work without needing direct access to source code.
- SAST needs access to source code to analyze it.
Speed of analysis:
- SCA can complete scans in seconds or minutes, regardless of the size of the project.
- SAST often performs in-depth scans of large, complex codebases, making it more time-consuming.
Ultimately, SAST is all about identifying security vulnerabilities in proprietary and/or custom code. SCA supports broader use cases, from vulnerability management through license compliance, and SBOM generation. This makes them excellent teammates.
What is DAST?
Also known as “outside in” security testing, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) examines code from an attacker’s point of view, simulating attacks to expose vulnerabilities. DAST helps identify security gaps in code, and can identify unforeseen outcomes that could have a downstream impact on application security.
DAST complements SAST, analyzing applications during runtime, detecting vulnerabilities that may only appear while the application is active. Because this combination can enable a more thorough detection of vulnerabilities, it can help mitigate false negatives and reduce security gaps.
Some other benefits of combining SAST and DAST include:
- Accuracy and validation: By detecting vulnerabilities in runtime, DAST helps validate and prioritize SAST’s findings. This cross-validation reduces false positives – and the alert fatigue that comes with it.
- Context and insight: DAST gives context to SAST’s line-by-line analysis of code, giving defenders the ability to understand both the source and the impact of any vulnerabilities.
Like SAST and SCA, DAST tools can be automated or performed manually.
And like the other analysis toolss, it’s less about SAST vs. DAST vs. SCA than it is about how the tools can be leveraged in a complementary way. DAST rounds out the capabilities of the other tools by testing applications while they’re running, giving developers and security teams insights into how the application behaves under attack, exposing weaknesses that might only surface once an application is deployed. In this respect, DAST is reactive— a final step in the SDLC, sweeping up any errors that survived through coding, into build, and now into deployment.
What Are the Use Cases for SAST?
In addition to early vulnerability detection, use cases for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) in software development include:
#1 Continuous code monitoring, through integration into CI/CD pipelines.
#2 Real-time feedback: When integrated into the development workflow, SAST can give developers feedback as they write code.
#3 Dependencies analysis: Some SAST tools examine dependencies for vulnerabilities, as well as the application code.
#4 Binary and bytecode analysis: Some SAST tools can inspect all of the code in the application, including compiled components and third-party libraries that might not be available as source code (e.g., proprietary or legacy code).
#5 Compliance enforcement with industry standards, including HIPAA, OWASP, and PCI DSS.
Essential SAST Tool Features
In keeping with this shift towards collaboration with developer teams, the best SAST tools provide a user-friendly experience, with actionable insights and clear guidance for remediation. Some key features to consider when choosing an SAST tool include:
Accuracy and depth of analysis: Choose a tool that provides comprehensive scanning across multiple languages and frameworks, such as Terraform, Dockerfile, Kubernetes, and AWS CloudFormation.
Integration and automation capability: Look for a SAST tool that integrates seamlessly with CI/CD tools, existing development tools, and workflows, allowing for automated scanning.
Customization capability: Every organization is different. A SAST tool that provides flexible rule configurations and customizable scanning that aligns with your specific security and risk profile will meet your needs.
Risk prioritization: If everything is a threat, nothing is a threat. A SAST tool that provides context will help defenders to focus on the most critical 5% of issues that impact their organization.
Actionable reporting: Your SAST tool should provide clear, detailed reports, along with prioritized findings and remediation guidance for mitigating identified risks faster and more efficiently.
OX Security’s Built-in SAST Tool: Secure Code Without Disruption
At times, it can feel like AppSec and security teams are drowning in a sea of software vulnerabilities. The truth is, only a fraction of AppSec issues are exploitable, reachable, and impactful. OX Security’s built-in SAST tool helps security teams to focus on the 5% that matters: By enabling more secure software development, it reduces the false positives and alerts that most other tools produce, allowing teams to focus on the critical issues specific to their operating environment.
While SAST, SCA, and DAST tools do a great job of enabling a more holistic approach that integrates security into DevOps processes, they don’t often “talk” to each other. Many tools lack sufficient context to manage growing software supply chain risk, leaving defenders staring down the barrel of a coverage and visibility gap compounded by alert fatigue and inadequate remediation capacity.
OX’s Active ASPM platform removes the historical siloes between application and vulnerability scanning tools, providing more context and giving AppSec practitioners the ability to prioritize, fix, and track issues throughout the SDLC.
OX unifies application security practices and prevents risks across the software supply chain, giving organizations the tools they need to eliminate manual practices and enable scalable, secure development.
Find out how you can pinpoint vulnerabilities in minutes with OX’s built-in SAST solution, start for free now.
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