KB-2233 Appian Self-Managed Vulnerability Testing

Purpose

Self-managed customers can perform security-related activities against their Appian installation such as penetration testing and vulnerability scanning as well as software composition analysis scans on installers, containers and plugin jars. This article outlines accepted formats for submitting vulnerabilities to Appian.

Submitting Results

The following applies to all submissions:

• All documentation (including results, summaries, and reproduction steps) must be submitted in English.
• Appian will not accept findings that are missing information within the provided templates.
• Submissions much be done via support case.

Appian Vulnerabilities

This section is applicable to penetration testing or vulnerability scans against Appian installations.

Fill out the Appian Vulnerability Submission Worksheet according to the instructions below:

• All submitted vulnerabilities must be validated by the assessor prior to submission. Appian does not accept unvalidated results or direct output from automated scanners without additional manual validation.
• Appian requires verifiable evidence such as screenshots, payloads, or any other associated proof-of-concept material as well as manual reproduction steps in order to properly validate any reported vulnerability findings.
• All scanning or testing documentation must be accompanied by:
  
  • A summarized index of all issues found, with the severity level of each issue.
  • Clear evidence performed by the assessor showing that the proposed vulnerability can be used to exploit the system, for example by:
    
    • Allowing inappropriate access to the system or its data.
    • Allowing inappropriate modification of the system or its data.
    • Inappropriate use of a component of the system or as a whole.
  • A description of the risk to the system.
  • Guidance on how to reach the impacted end point(s).
  • Clear steps on how to reproduce the issue.

Appian Third-Party Component Vulnerabilities

This section is applicable to Software Composition Analysis scans against Appian installers, containers and plugin jars.

Fill out the Appian third-party vulnerability submission worksheet according to the instructions below: 

• Version (major and hotfix) must be provided.
• Self-managed vs. leveraging Appian on Kubernetes must be specified.
• If the vulnerability reporting source is vendor specific (ex: BlackDuck or X-Ray), the customer should provide as much explanatory detail as possible in the Description column in order for Appian to effectively validate the issue.

What to Expect Next

• Appian will review the findings (assuming all submission requirements have been met) and either accept or reject each one.
  • For rejected findings, Appian will provide an explanation as to why the reported vulnerability was rejected (false positive, configuration-level controls available to mitigate, etc.).
  • For accepted findings, Appian will classify the severity of the finding as Low/Medium/High/Critical.
• Appian Support will provide analyses and impact assessments of the report and individual findings through the support case.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all self-managed versions of Appian.

Last Reviewed: May 2023