SAST: Static Analysis to Detect Code Vulnerabilities
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) analyzes source code to find security vulnerabilities without executing the application. It detects issues like injection flaws, insecure data handling, and broken authentication at the code level, enabling teams to fix vulnerabilities before deployment.
What Is SAST?
SAST is a white-box testing technique that examines source code, bytecode, or binary code for security weaknesses. Unlike DAST (which tests running applications), SAST works directly on the code, identifying vulnerabilities by analyzing data flows, control flows, and code patterns.
What SAST Detects
SAST identifies injection vulnerabilities (SQL, NoSQL, command, XPath), cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure cryptographic usage, hardcoded secrets, path traversal, insecure deserialization, broken authentication patterns, and data flow issues where untrusted input reaches sensitive operations.
How Traqen Implements SAST
Traqen uses Semgrep as its SAST engine. Semgrep supports over 30 programming languages and uses pattern-based rules optimized for low false positives. Scans run in ephemeral Docker containers — your code is cloned temporarily and discarded after analysis.
Supported Languages
JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, PHP, C#, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Scala, and more. Semgrep rules cover framework-specific patterns for React, Express, Django, Spring, Rails, and other popular frameworks.
SAST as Part of a Complete Security Strategy
SAST excels at finding code-level issues but cannot detect runtime vulnerabilities or dependency flaws. Traqen combines SAST with SCA (dependency scanning), secrets detection, and DAST (runtime testing) for comprehensive coverage.
Frequently Asked Questions
SAST (Static Application Security Testing) is a method of analyzing source code for security vulnerabilities without executing the application. It examines code patterns, data flows, and control flows to identify potential weaknesses.
SAST analyzes source code without running the application (white-box testing). DAST tests the running application by sending requests and analyzing responses (black-box testing). They find different types of vulnerabilities and are complementary.
Some false positives are inherent to static analysis. Traqen uses Semgrep with rules optimized for precision, and the platform allows teams to triage and dismiss false positives to improve signal-to-noise ratio.
Traqen supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, PHP, C#, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Scala, and more through Semgrep.
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