The OWASP Zed Attack Proxy is a widely used tool for conducting web application penetration testing. It is free and open-source.
ZAP functions as a proxy between the tester’s browser and the web application, intercepting and scrutinizing messages.
ZAP is a tool that serves various professionals, from developers to security testing specialists, as well as those who are new to security testing.
ZAP 2.13.0
The new release of ZAP 2.13.0 adds support for HTTP/2, improved authentication handling, and Mac Silicon.
Starting from ZAP version 2.13.0, HTTP/2 is supported by default; no configuration changes are required.
The new version also enhances authentication handling, which helps auto-authenticate many web apps by just supplying the login page URL along with the credentials.
The latest update now allows support for Mac Silicon in the installer and docker images. You can obtain the docker images from the GitHub Container Registry.
New Scalable Options
“All of the “attack” tools which use threading, including both spiders and active scanner, have been changed to use 2x the number of processors as the default number of threads,” reads Zap release notes.
The network Rate Limiting feature enables pentesters to limit the request rate of HTTP/HTTPS and avoid overloading.
New scan rules have been added with ZAP that allow pentesters to scan for popular vulnerabilities such as;
New Add-Ons
Selenium add-on has been updated to use the Selenium v4 library.
Along with Selenium Authentication Helper released, which helps testers to identify and set up authentication with ZAP.
A complete list of enhancements and fixes can be found here.