# Sobelow
Sobelow is a security-focused static analysis tool for the
Phoenix framework. For security researchers, it is a useful
tool for getting a quick view of points-of-interest. For
project maintainers, it can be used to prevent introducing a
number of common vulnerabilities.
Currently Sobelow detects some types of the following
security issues:
* Insecure configuration
* Known-vulnerable Dependencies
* Cross-Site Scripting
* SQL injection
* Command injection
* Denial of Service
* Directory traversal
* Unsafe serialization
Potential vulnerabilities are flagged in different colors
according to confidence in their insecurity. High confidence is
red, medium confidence is yellow, and low confidence is green.
A finding is typically marked "low confidence" if it looks
like a function could be used insecurely, but it cannot
reliably be determined if the function accepts user-supplied
input. That is to say, green findings are not secure, they
just require greater manual validation.
**Note:** This project is in constant development, and
additional vulnerabilities will be flagged as time goes on.
If you encounter a bug, or would like to request additional
features or security checks, please open an issue!
## Installation
To install Sobelow, you must have a working Elixir environment.
Then, execute the following from the command line:
$ mix archive.install hex sobelow
You may also install directly from GitHub with the following
command:
$ mix archive.install github nccgroup/sobelow
## Use
The simplest way to scan a Phoenix project is to run the
following from the project root:
$ mix sobelow
## Options
* `--root -r` - Specify application root directory
* `--with-code -v` - Print vulnerable code snippets
* `--ignore -i` - Ignore modules
* `--details -d` - Get module details
* `--all-details` - Get all module details
* `--private` - Skip update checks
* `--router` - Specify router location
* `--exit` - Return non-zero exit status
* `--format -f` - Specify findings output format
The `root` option takes a path argument:
$ mix sobelow --root ../my_project
The `with-code` option takes no arguments:
$ mix sobelow --with-code
The `ignore` option takes a comma-separated list of modules:
$ mix sobelow -i XSS.Raw,Traversal
The `details` option takes a single module:
$ mix sobelow -d Config.CSRF
The `exit` option accepts a confidence threshold (low, medium, or high),
and will return a non-zero exit status at or above that threshold.
$ mix sobelow --exit Low
The `format` option accepts an output format for findings. Current formats
include `txt` (the default) and `json`.
Note: The `json` format option does not support the `--with-code` flag.
All findings are organized by confidence level, and contain a "type"
key. However, other keys may vary between finding types.
$ mix sobelow --format json
## False Positives
Sobelow favors over-reporting versus under-reporting. As such,
you may find a number of false positives in a typical scan.
These findings may be individually ignored by adding a
`@sobelow_skip` mark, along with a list of modules, before
the function definition.
```elixir
@sobelow_skip ["Traversal"]
def vuln_func(...) do
...
end
```
Then, run the scan with the `--skip` flag.
$ mix sobelow --skip
Config and Vulnerable Dependency findings cannot be skipped in
this way. For these, use the standard `ignore` option.
## Modules
Findings categories are broken up into modules. These modules
can then be used to either ignore classes of findings (via the
`ignore` and `skip` options) or to get vulnerability details (via the
`details` option).
This list, and other helpful information, can be found on the
command line:
$ mix help sobelow
## Updates
When scanning a project, Sobelow will occasionally check for
updates, and will print an alert if a new version is available.
Sobelow keeps track of the last update-check by creating a
`.sobelow` file in the root of the scanned project.
If this functionality is not desired, the `--private` flag can
be used with the scan.
$ mix sobelow --private