Upgrading to DefectDojo Version 3.0.x

Locations enabled by default

DD_V3_FEATURE_LOCATIONS now defaults to True. Locations is a polymorphic location/asset model that replaces the legacy Endpoint model. URL Locations are the direct equivalent of Endpoints (same protocol, host, port, path, query, and fragment fields), and the model additionally supports Dependency Locations for SBOM/library data that Endpoints could never represent.

How to migrate

After the feature is enabled on an existing instance, run the migrate_endpoints_to_locations management command to carry your Endpoint data forward into Locations. Enabling the flag alone does not move data — the command performs the one-time conversion. For every Endpoint, it:

  1. Creates (or re-uses) a URL Location from the Endpoint’s protocol, userinfo, host, port, path, query, and fragment.
  2. Carries over all tags and re-points all metadata (DojoMeta) onto the new Location.
  3. Creates a LocationProductReference so the URL appears under the correct Asset (Product).
  4. Creates a LocationFindingReference for every Endpoint_Status, collapsing the old multi-flag combinations into a single canonical status (first match wins):
    Endpoint_Status flagResulting Location status
    risk_accepted=TrueRisk Accepted
    false_positive=TrueFalse Positive
    out_of_scope=TrueOut of Scope
    mitigated=TrueMitigated
    (none of the above)Active

Running the migration

python manage.py migrate_endpoints_to_locations
  • Idempotent — safe to re-run. Each phase uses bulk_create(..., ignore_conflicts=True), so re-running the command will not create duplicates and will pick up any Endpoints not yet converted. After converting, it runs a tag-inheritance pass so migrated Locations pick up inherited product tags.
  • Resilient to per-row failures. A single bad Endpoint is logged (with its ID) and skipped rather than aborting the whole run; re-run after addressing the cause to convert the remainder. The command prints live progress with an ETA and a final migrated/total summary.
  • Tuning flags (optional): --batch-size (DB iterator chunk size, default 1000) and --progress-every (progress-line cadence, default 50). --benchmark and --query-count exist for profiling only and add overhead.

For full details (including the read-compatibility behavior of the legacy API), see Migrating from Endpoints.

What happens to existing endpoint data

  • Nothing is deleted. The original Endpoint and Endpoint_Status rows remain in the database to back the read-only legacy API. They are simply no longer used by the new UI or by imports.
  • Reads keep working; writes return 403. GET /api/v2/endpoints/ and GET /api/v2/endpoint_status/ return rows projected from Locations, preserving the original Endpoint IDs and familiar fields. POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE on those routes return HTTP 403 — write clients should move to POST /api/v2/urls/, POST /api/v2/location_findings/, and POST /api/v2/location_products/.

How to roll back

Set DD_V3_FEATURE_LOCATIONS=False to return to the legacy Endpoint model, UI, and read/write API. Because the original Endpoint rows are never deleted, your pre-upgrade endpoint data is still there.

Caveat — migration is one-way. There is no automated path that re-creates Endpoints from Locations. Any endpoint changes you made through the new Location endpoints while the feature was enabled are not back-ported into the legacy Endpoint tables, so they will not be visible after rolling back.

Asset / Organization labels enabled by default

DD_ENABLE_V3_ORGANIZATION_ASSET_RELABEL now defaults to True. This renames “Product Type” → “Organization” and “Product” → “Asset” throughout the UI, and routes /product/type → /organization and /product → /asset (with backward-compatibility redirects from the old paths).

This change is cosmetic only: the database model names, field names, and API endpoints are unchanged, so existing automation and integrations continue to work without modification.

How to roll back

Set DD_ENABLE_V3_ORGANIZATION_ASSET_RELABEL=False to restore the “Product” / “Product Type” labels and the original URLs. No data is changed by this feature, so the rollback is fully reversible.

Authorized Users panel replaces Members/Groups under legacy authorization

Open Source DefectDojo uses the legacy authorization model: access to a Product is granted by Product.authorized_users (with cascade via Product_Type.authorized_users), and is_staff / is_superuser bypass everything.

In 2.59 the classic UI restores the “Authorized Users” panel on the Product and Product Type detail pages. The panel reads from and writes to Product.authorized_users / Product_Type.authorized_users directly, so adding a user actually grants them the access the UI suggests it does.

New endpoints

  • GET/POST /product/<pid>/authorized_users/add — list / add users to Product.authorized_users
  • POST /product/<pid>/authorized_users/<user_id>/delete — remove a user
  • GET/POST /product/type/<ptid>/authorized_users/add — same for Product_Type.authorized_users
  • POST /product/type/<ptid>/authorized_users/<user_id>/delete

Both endpoints are gated so only is_staff / is_superuser users can add or remove. Non-staff users see the panel but no management actions.

How RBAC rows are converted

The data migration 0267_backfill_authorized_users translates RBAC tables into the legacy model with the following rules:

RBAC rowLegacy effect
Product_Member (any role, direct or via Product_Group + Dojo_Group_Member)Adds the user to Product.authorized_users
Product_Type_Member (any role, direct or via Product_Type_Group + Dojo_Group_Member)Adds the user to Product_Type.authorized_users
Global_Role(Owner) (direct or via group)Sets User.is_superuser = True
`Global_Role(WriterMaintainer
Global_Role(Reader)No global elevation — relies on per-product membership

Per-product role granularity (Reader vs Writer vs Maintainer vs Owner) collapses to membership-only because the legacy model has no per-product role concept. Dojo_Group structure as a permission-bearing entity is also lost; only the flattened individual user memberships remain.

Required actions

  • Database migrations run automatically on upgrade. Existing access is carried forward into the legacy authorized_users model. Existing data is preserved.
  • Audit the upgrade in staging first. A new python manage.py preview_legacy_authorization_migration management command is shipped in 2.59 to summarize what an upgrade would change against a given database. It is read-only. Recommended workflow: install 2.59 in a staging environment with a snapshot of your production database, run the command, review the summary, then upgrade production.
  • Migrating from OS to Pro? A new python manage.py reconcile_authorized_users_to_rbac management command is available on Pro to bring any access changes you made under OS forward into Pro RBAC. It supports --dry-run and is idempotent.

Pro customers are not impacted

DefectDojo Pro deployments retain full RBAC. The Pro UX is unchanged — same Members/Groups management surface as before.

SSO providers are available in DefectDojo Pro only

Single sign-on (SAML, OIDC, Google, Okta, Azure AD, GitLab, Auth0, Keycloak, GitHub Enterprise, and remote-user header authentication) has been consolidated into DefectDojo Pro. Open source DefectDojo now exposes only local username/password login and the password-reset flow.

Required actions

  • No customizations or local-only login: No action required.
  • Currently logging in via SSO on open source: Existing user accounts and group memberships are preserved on upgrade, but SSO sign-in will no longer work after 2.59. To keep an SSO-driven login experience, switch to DefectDojo Pro, which carries forward and extends the SSO surface (provider configuration moves to a UI-managed tuner).

Removal: Questionnaire API Endpoints

As announced in DefectDojo 2.56.0, the following Questionnaire API endpoints have been removed:

  • /api/v2/questionnaire_answered_questionnaires/
  • /api/v2/questionnaire_answers/
  • /api/v2/questionnaire_engagement_questionnaires/
  • /api/v2/questionnaire_general_questionnaires/
  • /api/v2/questionnaire_questions

Required Actions

Any requests to these endpoints will now return a 404 Not Found error.

Removal: Credential Manager

As announced in DefectDojo 2.57.0, the Credential Manager feature has been removed. The following API endpoints are no longer available:

  • /api/v2/credentials/
  • /api/v2/credential_mappings/

Required Actions

Any requests to these endpoints will now return a 404 Not Found error. The Credential Manager UI is no longer available.

Removal: Stub Findings

As announced in DefectDojo 2.57.0, the Stub Findings feature has been removed. The following API endpoint is no longer available:

  • /api/v2/stub_findings/

Required Actions

Any requests to this endpoint will now return a 404 Not Found error. The Stub Findings UI is no longer available.

Configuration change in Watson Search Indexing

In PR 14881We optimized the way the Django Watson search index is updated during imports and reimports. There is not a single configuration setting to manage the threshold: DD_WATSON_ASYNC_INDEX_UPDATE_BATCH_SIZE. The default value should work fine for most instances.

The Dependency Check parser previously created one finding per <relatedDependency> in the report, in addition to the finding for the main vulnerable dependency. Because OWASP Dependency-Check attaches the vulnerability only to the main dependency in the XML and the related entries are metadata pointing to other files in the same logical component, this produced N findings sharing the same title, CVE, component name and component version — only the file path differed. For projects with Spring Boot, ActiveMQ, or other libraries whose CPE matches many sibling artifacts this produced significant noise.

Starting in 2.59.1, the parser emits exactly one finding per vulnerability per main dependency. The file paths of any related dependencies are surfaced in the finding description under a **Related Filepaths:** block.

Background: what <relatedDependencies> actually contains

OWASP Dependency-Check’s DependencyBundlingAnalyzer merges co-grouped artifacts into a single main dependency and lists the others under <relatedDependencies>. It does this under five scenarios:

  1. Identical content (hashesMatch) — the same jar (matching sha1) found at multiple paths, e.g. the same library packaged into multiple ear/war archives.
  2. Shaded jar (isShadedJar) — a .jar and a pom.xml extracted from inside it share the same CPE; the pom.xml is recorded as related.
  3. WebJar (isWebJar) — a .js file extracted from a WebJar matches the jar’s CPE (mapped via pkg:maven/org.webjars/<name>@<version>); the js file is recorded as related to the jar.
  4. Same CPE + base path + vulnerabilities + filename match — sibling artifacts in the same project that share a CPE. Example: spring-boot, spring-boot-actuator, spring-boot-starter-jdbc, etc. all map to the spring_boot CPE and are grouped under the main spring-boot jar.
  5. NPM same name + version — the same npm package discovered via different resolution paths (for example package-lock.json plus node_modules).

Only scenario 1 represents the same vulnerable artifact at multiple deploy locations. Scenarios 2-5 are different files representing one logical component. Both cases were previously inflated into separate findings; both now collapse to one finding with the related paths listed in the description.

Required actions

  • Users filtering or grouping by the related tag: that tag is no longer applied because related findings are no longer created. Update any saved filters, dashboards, or rules that depend on it. Equivalent information is now available in the finding description (look for **Related Filepaths:**).
  • Reimport behavior: on the next reimport of an existing Dependency Check report, the previously-created related findings will be closed as no longer present in the report. This is expected and matches the new parsing behavior.

For more information, check the Release Notes.