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.

Installation Instructions:

1. Run using Docker

Every release is also published on DockerHub.

Using docker run

The easiest way to start WebGoat as a Docker container is to use the all-in-one docker container. This is a docker image that has WebGoat and WebWolf running inside.

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 -e TZ=Europe/Amsterdam webgoat/goatandwolf

WebGoat will be located at: http://127.0.0.1:8080/WebGoat WebWolf will be located at: http://127.0.0.1:9090/WebWolf

Important: Choose the correct timezone, so that the docker container and your host are in the same timezone. As it is important for the validity of JWT tokens used in certain exercises.

2. Standalone

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

java -jar webgoat-server-8.1.0.jar [--server.port=8080] [--server.address=localhost]
java -jar webwolf-8.1.0.jar [--server.port=9090] [--server.address=localhost]

The latest version of WebGoat needs Java 15 or above. By default, WebGoat and Webwolf start on port 8080, 9000 and 9090 with the environment variable WEBGOAT_PORT, WEBGOAT_HSQLPORT and WEBWOLF_PORT you can set different values.

export WEBGOAT_PORT=18080
export WEBGOAT_HSQLPORT=19001
export WEBWOLF_PORT=19090
java -jar webgoat-server-8.1.0.jar
java -jar webwolf-8.1.0.jar 

Use set instead of export if you're using Windows cmd.

3. Run from the sources

Prerequisites:

• Java 15
• Maven > 3.2.1
• Your favorite IDE
• Git, or Git support in your IDE

Open a command shell/window:

git clone [email protected]: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 the IP address add the following variable to the WebGoat/webgoat-container/src/main/resources/application.properties file:

server.address=x.x.x.x

4. Run with custom menu

For specialist only. There is a way to set up WebGoat with a personalized menu. You can leave out some menu categories or individual lessons by setting certain environment variables.

For instance running as a jar on a Linux/macOS it will look like this:

export EXCLUDE_CATEGORIES="CLIENT_SIDE,GENERAL,CHALLENGE"
export EXCLUDE_LESSONS="SqlInjectionAdvanced,SqlInjectionMitigations"
java -jar webgoat-server/target/webgoat-server-v8.2.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

Or in a docker run it would (once this version is pushed into docker hub) look like this:

docker run -d -p 80:8888 -p 8080:8080 -p 9090:9090 -e TZ=Europe/Amsterdam -e EXCLUDE_CATEGORIES="CLIENT_SIDE,GENERAL,CHALLENGE" -e EXCLUDE_LESSONS="SqlInjectionAdvanced,SqlInjectionMitigations" webgoat/goatandwolf