HelpStartConceptsUsers

Users

Users are the ZAP representations of websites/webapps' users. They allow certain actions to be performed from the point of view of an user of the webapps. For each Context, a set of Users can be defined, which can then be used in actions related to the context. Most commonly, during various scans the request messages can be sent from the point of view of an User.

The concept of Users is tightly tied to the concepts of Session Management and Authentication. When a User is first used somewhere in ZAP, an authentication is performed (according to the Authentication Method defined for the Context) and a Session is created and configured for this user (according to the Session Management defined for the Context). After that, requests sent from the point of view of an User are modified (if necessary) and sent in such a way that the web server identifies them as being sent by an authenticated webapp/website user. If anytime a message is sent from the perspective of a User and the response received seems unauthenticated (as identified using the Logged In and Logged Out Authentication indicators), a new authentication is performed and the Session is updated accordingly.

In order to perform the authentication of an user on a website / in a webapp, the Authentication Method defines how the authentication is done (the process), while the necessary credentials (the exact identifiers) are dependent on the user, so, in ZAP, they are configured in the Users.

Configured via

Session Contexts Dialog

See also

	Youtube tutorial	of the Authentication, Session Management and Users Management features of ZAP [external link to http://youtu.be/cR4gw-cPZOA].
	Authentication Overview	for an overview of Authentication in ZAP
	UI Overview	for an overview of the user interface
	Features	provided by ZAP
	Session Contexts Dialog	for an overview of the Session Properties