Download OWASP ZAP – Free Web Application Security Scanner

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is the world’s most widely used free and open-source web application security scanner, developed under the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) umbrella. It is designed to help security professionals and developers find vulnerabilities in web applications during development and penetration testing, acting as a man-in-the-middle proxy between the browser and the web application.

ZAP provides both an easy-to-use graphical interface and a powerful command-line API, making it suitable for both manual security testing by beginners and automated security scanning in CI/CD pipelines by experienced DevSecOps teams. Its active and passive scanning engines detect a wide range of security issues including SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, insecure headers, and many OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.

With a rich marketplace of community-developed add-ons, ZAP can be extended with additional scanning rules, authentication handlers, reporting formats, and integration plugins. It is used by security professionals worldwide and is the go-to tool recommended by OWASP for web application penetration testing.

Key Features

• Intercepting proxy to inspect and modify HTTP/HTTPS traffic between browser and target application.
• Active scanner to automatically detect vulnerabilities including SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and more.
• Passive scanner that analyzes traffic without sending additional requests, safe for production use.
• Spider and AJAX spider for comprehensive web application crawling and link discovery.
• Fuzzer for automated testing of inputs with custom payloads and attack patterns.
• REST API and command-line interface for CI/CD pipeline integration and automation.
• Extensive add-on marketplace for additional scanning rules, authentication, and reporting.

How to Install

1. Ensure Java 11 or later is installed on your system.
2. Download the OWASP ZAP installer for your operating system from the link below.
3. Run the installer and follow the setup wizard to complete installation.
4. Launch ZAP and choose between the GUI mode for manual testing or headless mode for automation.
5. Configure your browser to use ZAP as an HTTP proxy (default: localhost:8080) to start intercepting and scanning traffic.