Welcome
The StackHawk CLI hawk
is a tool for performing dynamic application security tests, managing StackHawk configuration files,
and future functionality from StackHawk.
The StackHawk CLI is made up of various sub commands, for example hawk scan, which can
be used to perform a scan of your running web application just like using the stackhawk/hawkscan
docker image, learn more about the CLI vs. docker container.
The StackHawk CLI is a lighter weight tool to run scans, as well as provides commands to validate stackhawk.yml files.
The hawk validate config command will validate your configuration file, or files, using the new
configuration validation specification. The specification
is in the JSONSchema format and is publicly available via SchemaStore.org
which makes stackhawk.yml
file validation already enabled in your favorite IDE.
Learn more about the CLI’s commands.
Quickstart
View our quickstart guide on how to complete your first scan with the StackHawk CLI.
Install
The StackHawk CLI can be installed by downloading a self-contained zip file or via homebrew.
Once installed the CLI tool hawk
will be available in your terminal, checkout hawk --help
for sub commands and options.
Prerequisites
The main requirement for the StackHawk CLI is Java version 11 or higher.
Run the following command in your terminal to check your version of java.
$ java --version
openjdk 11.0.11 2021-04-20
OpenJDK Runtime Environment AdoptOpenJDK-11.0.11+9 (build 11.0.11+9)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM AdoptOpenJDK-11.0.11+9 (build 11.0.11+9, mixed mode)
If your output look similar to the above you’re all set!
If you don’t have Java installed visit https://adoptium.net/ or install via brew…
$ brew install openjdk
Make sure you follow any post-install instructions in the “Caveats” section of the brew install output.
NOTE: To use the hawk.spider.ajax option with the CLI you must have firefox or chrome installed and set hawk.spider.ajaxBrowser appropriately.
Install with Homebrew
To install the latest version of the StackHawk CLI via homebrew
you’ll need to install the StackHawk Tap and the CLI tool hawk
.
NOTE: To install on systems without brew, such as Linux or Windows, follow the Install with Zip file guide.
$ brew tap stackhawk/cli
$ brew install hawk
Single command to install tap and CLI
$ brew install stackhawk/cli/hawk
Now you’re ready to use the hawk
command. See below for usage instructions.
You can also view and install alternate versions and beta releases via brew as you can with the stackhawk/hawkscan:beta
docker images.
Once you’ve added the brew tap stackhawk/cli
you can run to see all available versions.
$ brew search /hawk.*/
==> Formulae
stackhawk/cli/hawk stackhawk/cli/hawk-beta ✔ stackhawk/cli/hawk-beta@2.0.0
Install with Zip file
To install via the zip file open a terminal in your home directory, download the CLI zip file and extract it.
Example
$ curl -v https://download.stackhawk.com/hawk/cli/hawk-2.4.1.zip -o hawk-2.4.1.zip
$ unzip hawk-2.4.1.zip
Add the CLI to your $PATH
Zsh
echo "export PATH=$HOME/hawk-2.4.1:$PATH" >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
Bash
echo "export PATH=$HOME/hawk-2.4.1:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
Once your path has been updated you can use the hawk
command.
Download
Download the CLI zip file.
File | SHA256 Sum |
---|---|
hawk-2.4.1.zip | ea0ec2e79d729412d6e5b4b376dfb5498f8bf1af691d84a479e8bc20685d7e9e |
Usage
With the hawk
command now available you can run hawk --help/-h
to get help on the available options and commands.
The --help/-h
flag is supported by all sub commands, for example hawk scan -h
will show help for the scan
command.
Before going any further run hawk init to set your StackHawk API Key, which is required for many commands.
When running a hawk scan
command the API key you supplied to hawk init
will be used by reading it from the $HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
file, or it can be supplied as an option on the command line.
$ hawk --api-key=xxxxx scan
Command Options
Command options in the StackHawk CLI can be supplied via file or environment variable in addition to the command line option, ie: --option
.
The property values in $HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
will be used if a command line option is not specified. For example if the hawk --api-key
option is not specified the value from the api-key=xxxx
property in the $HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
file will be used. Additionally,
the command line option can be specified via an environment variable. Due to the naming constraints on environment variables the equivalent
environment variable for the --api-key
option would be API_KEY
.
Examples
Command Line Option | hawk.properties |
Environment variable |
---|---|---|
--api-key=xxxxx |
api-key=xxxxx |
API_KEY=xxxxx |
--debug |
debug=true |
DEBUG=true |
--hawk-mem=1g |
hawk-mem=1g |
HAWK_MEM=1g |
--no-color |
no-color=true |
NO_COLOR=true |
The three forms of options can be used together and will be loaded in the preference order
Command Line Option -> Environment Variable -> hawk.properties
.
Docker vs. CLI
Starting with version 2.0.0
the HawkScan Docker container
contains the StackHawk CLI and the ENTRYPOINT for the container is the hawk scan
command.
The StackHawk CLI and HawkScan Docker container will be released on the same versioning cycle
and will be feature compatible.
For many CI/CD use cases the HawkScan Docker container is the best choice for running scans against your web application. Sometimes however, the dependency on Docker can be prohibitive when running from your local machine or in CI/CD environments without docker-in-docker support. Depending on your OS an entire virtual machine may be required to run docker. Docker can also present some networking issues when trying to scan applications listening on localhost, which is common for local web development.
The CLI is ideal for those learning to use HawkScan and are trying to configure their stackhawk.yml
configuration files.
The hawk validate config
command and hawk scan
commands will run faster via the CLI than Docker due to lower runtime
overhead in most operating systems. This makes the CLI well suited for testing stackhawk.yml
configuration files
as well as iterating on complex scan configurations like scripted authentication.
Commands
The CLI is the top level command hawk
which has several sub commands, future versions of the CLI may introduce new commands.
hawk
The hawk
root command doesn’t take any action on its own but does have options that can be set across multiple sub commands.
Options
--api-key=xxxxx
- StackHawk API Key can be supplied at runtime for any sub command’s usage.--no-color
- Do not use colors in the terminal output.
Example
$ hawk --no-color scan
hawk init
hawk init
will prompt you for a StackHawk API key which will be validated then stored in the file $HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
,
which will be created if it does not exist.
The property api-key
from $HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
will be used whenever a hawk
command is run instead of
requiring the usage of the --api-key=xxxx
option.
Options
--api-key=xxxx
- Will skip the terminal prompt and set theapi-key
property in the$HOME/.hawk/hawk.properties
file.
hawk validate config
Validate stackhawk.yml
configuration files before running hawk scan
. The validate config
command can validate
a single or multiple files merged together as supported by the scan
command.
Examples
Validate stackhawk.yml
or stackhawk.yaml
file in the current working directory.
$ hawk validate config
Validate the ./stackhawk-dev.yml
yaml file.
$ hawk validate config ./stackhawk-dev.yml
Validate the configurations of stackhawk.yml
and prod/stackhawk.yml
files merged together.
$ hawk validate config stackhawk.yml prod/stackhawk.yml
hawk scan
Scan your running web application or api.
The scan
command takes stackhawk.yml configuration files as arguments, each file being merged onto the last
in the order they are supplied. By default, the stackhawk.yml
file in the current working directory will be used
if no arguments are supplied.
Options
--repo-dir
- Directory containing yourstackhawk.yml
files. Config file arguments will be searched for in this directory.-e, --env
- Set variables in thestackhawk.yml
configuration as described here. This argument allows multiples and is of type key/value pair, ie:--env MY_VAR1=value1 --env MY_VAR2=value2
or-e MY_VAR1=value1 -e MY_VAR2=value2
.--env-file
- Set variables in thestackhawk.yml
configuration as described here. This argument--env-file=my-env.txt
takes a path to a file of key/value pairs with each line containing a pair, ie:$ cat my-env.txt MY_VAR1=value1 MY_VAR2=value2
Advanced Options
--session-home
- The working directory for the scan. The default is$HOME/.hawk/sessions
--git-url
- The url of the git repository containingstackhawk.yml
config files and other scan and application files. ie:https://username:token@github.com/username/repository.git
--git-dev
- The git branch to use from the--git-url
specified.--hawk-mem
- The maximum memory the scanner can use, the default is 1/3 of available memory. ie1g
or1500m
--debug
- Enable debug level logging to the StackHawk platform and the logs in the directory$HOME/.hawk/logs
.--verbose
- Enables logs to be printed in the foreground
stackhawk.yml environment variables
The --env/-e
and --env-file
arguments can be used to supply variable values to the stackhawk.yml
files.
For example if your stackhawk.yml
file had host: ${APP_HOST:http://localhost:3000}
in it using -e APP_HOST=http://dev.example.com
that would set the host
to http://dev.example.com
. In this way the scan
command’s -e
works similarly to the docker command’s -e
.
However the hawk
command can also use the current environment for the variables as well.
For example, given the following stackhawk.yml
all of the commands listed will resolve the configuration file the same way.
app:
host: ${APP_HOST:http://dev.example.com}
env: ${APP_ENV:Test}
$ hawk scan -e APP_HOST=http://localhost:3000 -e APP_ENV=Dev
$ APP_HOST=http://localhost:3000 APP_ENV=Dev hawk scan
$ export APP_HOST=http://localhost:3000
$ export APP_ENV=Dev
$ hawk scan
This allows a great degree of flexibility from environment variables to environment files for managing the flexible and secret parts
of the stackhawk.yml
configuration file.
hawk download log
Download and print HawkScan log files to the console. Pass the scan ID as an argument to get the log for any previously run scan. You can review the scan log in order to troubleshoot any issues encountered while scanning.
Example
$ hawk download log XXxxXXXX-xXXX-xxXX-XXxX-xXXxxXXXXxXX
The ID of a scan can be found in the URL after clicking an individual scan found on the Scans page. The last portion of the URL is the scan ID. So for the URL https://app.stackhawk.com/scans/XXxxXXXX-xXXX-xxXX-XXxX-xXXxxXXXXxXX, the scan ID would be XXxxXXXX-xXXX-xxXX-XXxX-xXXxxXXXXxXX.
Running the command will output the scan log to the console/STDOUT. The scan log can be saved to a file by using the right
angle bracket (>
) with the command along with a destination file.
$ hawk download log XXxxXXXX-xXXX-xxXX-XXxX-xXXxxXXXXxXX > hawkscan.log
hawk version
Print the version of the CLI.
Example
$ hawk version
v2.0.0
Update CLI Version
To get the latest version of the HawkScan CLI, run this command:
brew upgrade hawk
You can also upgrade your CLI by following the instructions to install with a ZIP file.