DAMN VULNERABLE WEB APPLICATION

Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) is a PHP/MariaDB web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goal is to be an aid for security professionals to test their skills and tools in a legal environment, help web developers better understand the processes of securing web applications and to aid both students & teachers to learn about web application security in a controlled class room environment.

The aim of DVWA is to practice some of the most common web vulnerabilities, with various levels of difficulty, with a simple straightforward interface. Please note, there are both documented and undocumented vulnerabilities with this software. This is intentional. You are encouraged to try and discover as many issues as possible.

---

WARNING!

Damn Vulnerable Web Application is damn vulnerable! Do not upload it to your hosting provider's public html folder or any Internet facing servers, as they will be compromised. It is recommended using a virtual machine (such as VirtualBox or VMware), which is set to NAT networking mode. Inside a guest machine, you can download and install XAMPP for the web server and database.

Disclaimer

We do not take responsibility for the way in which any one uses this application (DVWA). We have made the purposes of the application clear and it should not be used maliciously. We have given warnings and taken measures to prevent users from installing DVWA on to live web servers. If your web server is compromised via an installation of DVWA, it is not our responsibility, it is the responsibility of the person/s who uploaded and installed it.

---

License

This file is part of Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA).

Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA). If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

---

Internationalisation

This file is available in multiple languages:

• Arabic: العربية
• Chinese: 简体中文
• French: Français
• Korean: 한국어
• Persian: فارسی
• Polish: Polski
• Portuguese: Português
• Spanish: Español
• Turkish: Türkçe
• Indonesia: Indonesia
• Vietnamese: Vietnamese
• Italian: Italiano
• Ukrainian: Українська
• Russian: Русский

If you would like to contribute a translation, please submit a PR. Note though, this does not mean just run it through Google Translate and send that in, those will be rejected. Submit your translated version by adding a new 'README.xx.md' file where xx is the two-letter code of your desired language (based on ISO 639-1).

---

Download

While there are various versions of DVWA around, the only supported version is the latest source from the official GitHub repository. You can either clone it from the repo:

git clone https://github.com/digininja/DVWA.git

Or download a ZIP of the files.

---

Installation

Automated Installation 🛠️

Note, this is not an official DVWA script, it was written by IamCarron. A lot of work went into creating the script and, when it was created, it did not do anything malicious, however it is recommended you review the script before blindly running it on your system, just in case. Please report any bugs to IamCarron, not here.

An automated configuration script for DVWA on Debian-based machines, including Kali, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS...

Note: This script requires root privileges and is tailored for Debian-based systems. Ensure you are running it as the root user.

Installation Requirements

• Operating System: Debian-based system (Kali, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS)
• Privileges: Execute as root user

Installation Steps

One-Liner

This will download an install script written by @IamCarron and run it automatically. This would not be included here if we did not trust the author and the script as it was when we reviewed it, but there is always the chance of someone going rogue, and so if you don't feel safe running someone else's code without reviewing it yourself, follow the manual process and you can review it once downloaded.

sudo bash -c "$(curl --fail --show-error --silent --location https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IamCarron/DVWA-Script/main/Install-DVWA.sh)"

Manually Running the Script

1. Download the script:

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IamCarron/DVWA-Script/main/Install-DVWA.sh
   

2. Make the script executable:

   chmod +x Install-DVWA.sh
   

3. Run the script as root:

   sudo ./Install-DVWA.sh
   

Installation Videos

• Installing DVWA on Kali running in VirtualBox
• Installing DVWA on Windows using XAMPP
• Installing Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) on Windows 10

Windows + XAMPP

The easiest way to install DVWA is to download and install XAMPP if you do not already have a web server setup.

XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.

This video walks you through the installation process for Windows but it should be similar for other OSs.

Docker

Thanks to hoang-himself and JGillam, every commit to the master branch causes a Docker image to be built and ready to be pulled down from GitHub Container Registry.

For more information on what you are getting, you can browse the prebuilt Docker images.

Getting Started

Prerequisites: Docker and Docker Compose.

• If you are using Docker Desktop, both of these should be already installed.
• If you prefer Docker Engine on Linux, make sure to follow their installation guide.

We provide support for the latest Docker release as shown above. If you are using Linux and the Docker package that came with your package manager, it will probably work too, but support will only be best-effort.

Upgrading Docker from the package manager version to upstream requires that you uninstall the old versions as seen in their manuals for Ubuntu, Fedora and others. Your Docker data (containers, images, volumes, etc.) should not be affected, but in case you do run into a problem, make sure to tell Docker and use search engines in the mean time.

Then, to get started:

1. Run docker version and docker compose version to see if you have Docker and Docker Compose properly installed. You should be able to see their versions in the output.

   For example:

   >>> docker version
   Client:
    [...]
    Version:           23.0.5
    [...]
   
   Server: Docker Desktop 4.19.0 (106363)
    Engine:
     [...]
     Version:          23.0.5
     [...]
   
   >>> docker compose version
   Docker Compose version v2.17.3
   

   If you don't see anything or get a command not found error, follow the prerequisites to setup Docker and Docker Compose.

2. Clone or download this repository and extract (see Download).

3. Open a terminal of your choice and change its working directory into this folder (DVWA).

4. Run docker compose up -d.

DVWA is now available at http://localhost:4280.

Notice that for running DVWA in containers, the web server is listening on port 4280 instead of the usual port of 80. For more information on this decision, see I want to run DVWA on a different port.

Local Build

If you made local changes and want to build the project from local, go to compose.yml and change pull_policy: always to pull_policy: build.

Running docker compose up -d should trigger Docker to build an image from local regardless of what is available in the registry.

See also: pull_policy.

Serve local files

If your making local changes and don't want to build the project for every change :

1. Go to compose.yml and uncomment :

       # volumes:
       #   - ./:/var/www/html
   

2. Run cp config/config.inc.php.dist config/config.inc.php to copy the default config file.
3. Run docker compose up -d and changes to local files will reflect on the container.

PHP Versions

Ideally you should be using the latest stable version of PHP as that is the version that this app will be developed and tested on.

Support will not be given for anyone trying