Brakeman is a static analysis tool which checks Ruby on Rails applications for security vulnerabilities.
It targets Rails versions > 2.0 with experimental support for Rails 3.x
Using RubyGems:
gem install brakeman
From source:
gem build brakeman.gemspec
gem install brakeman*.gem
brakeman app_path
To specify an output file for the results:
brakeman -o output_file app_path
The output format is determined by the file extension or by using the -f option. Current options are: text, html, csv, and tabs.
To suppress informational warnings and just output the report:
brakeman -q app_path
To see all kinds of debugging information:
brakeman -d app_path
Specific checks can be skipped, if desired. The name needs to be the correct case. For example, to skip looking for default routes (DefaultRoutes):
brakeman -x DefaultRoutes app_path
Multiple checks should be separated by a comma:
brakeman -x DefaultRoutes,Redirect app_path
To do the opposite and only run a certain set of tests:
brakeman -t SQL,ValidationRegex app_path
To indicate certain methods are "safe":
brakeman -s benign_method,totally_safe app_path
By default, brakeman will assume that unknown methods involving untrusted data are dangerous. For example, this would cause a warning (Rails 2):
<%= some_method(:option => params[:input]) %>
To only raise warnings only when untrusted data is being directly used:
brakeman -r app_path
See WARNING_TYPES for more information on the warnings reported by this tool.
The HTML output format provides an excerpt from the original application source where a warning was triggered. Due to the processing done while looking for vulnerabilities, the source may not resemble the reported warning and reported line numbers may be slightly off. However, the context still provides a quick look into the code which raised the warning.
Brakeman assigns a confidence level to each warning. This provides a rough estimate of how certain the tool is that a given warning is actually a problem. Naturally, these ratings should not be taken as absolute truth.
There are three levels of confidence:
- High - Either this is a simple warning (boolean value) or user input is very likely being used in unsafe ways.
- Medium - This generally indicates an unsafe use of a variable, but the variable may or may not be user input.
- Weak - Typically means user input was indirectly used in a potentially unsafe manner.
To only get warnings above a given confidence level:
brakeman -w3 app_path
The -w switch takes a number from 1 to 3, with 1 being low (all warnings) and 3 being high (only highest confidence warnings).
Brakeman options can stored and read from YAML files. To simplify the process of writing a configuration file, the -C option will output the currently set options.
Options passed in on the commandline have priority over configuration files.
The default config locations are ./config.yaml, ~/.brakeman/, and /etc/brakeman/config.yaml
The -c option can be used to specify a configuration file to use.
The MIT License
Copyright (c) 2010, YELLOWPAGES.COM, LLC
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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