- Web application security testing is the process of testing, analyzing, and reporting on the security level and/or posture of a Web application.
- It is used by Web developers and security administrators to test and gauge the security strength of a Web application using manual and automated security testing techniques. The key objective behind Web application security testing is to identify any vulnerabilities or threats that can impact the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the Web application.
- The prime objective of security testing is to find out how vulnerable a system may be and to determine whether its data and resources are protected from potential intruders/malicious users.
- Today security testing plays the vital role in all the web Applications as the hackers keep inventing new techniques everyday which can be for the money, recognition, to damage the reputation of the large-scale industries or sometimes, just for fun. People with even basic hacking skills can destroy a website if the application is poorly secured.
Types of web applications security Testing
- Black-box: security testing refers to a method of software security testing in which the security controls, defenses and design of an application are tested from the outside-in, with little or no prior knowledge of the application’s features and workings. Essentially, black-box testing takes an approach like that of a real anonymous attacker.
- Gray-box: The next step up from black-box testing is gray-box testing. If a black-box tester is examining a system from an outsider’s perspective, a gray-box tester has the access and knowledge levels of an application user, potentially with elevated privileges on the application/system. Gray-box pentesters typically have some knowledge of a network’s internals, potentially including design and architecture documentation.
- White-box: White-box testing goes by several different names, including clear-box, open-box, auxiliary and logic-driven testing. It falls on the opposite end of the spectrum from black-box testing: penetration testers are given full access to source code, architecture documentation and so forth. The main challenge with white-box testing is to go through the massive amount of code available to identify potential points of weakness, making it the most time-consuming type of penetration testing.
Methodology for Web Application Security Testing?
How can we add value to Web Application Security Testing?
- As a specialized and high performing testing company solely focused on security and Quality Assurance, Qseap has dealt with a variety of software, scenarios, and bugs to emerge successful each time.
- Qseap is one of the cert-in empaneled companies which has a team of dedicated Offensive Security Certified Professionals/Experts which provides an excellent secured environment to the clients through continuous assessment.
- Software development companies typically would have a testing team with no testing leadership and lack comprehensive testing knowledge. Qseap has the experience and expertise to fill in this GAP
- Web application Security Testing is the bread and butter for Qseap. More importantly, the testers are a bunch of passionate people who love what they do. You can peacefully focus on your business by engaging our team for security of your applications.
22 best practices for web application security testing:
Here are 22 tips to write safer applications. These improve the security of your application and provide you with multiple layers of defence.
- Validate all inputs at the server
- Prefer white lists to black lists
- Escape special characters
- Use prepared statements in database queries
- Use strong, random session tokens
- Use strong, random session tokens
- Use a hidden token in transaction requests
- Never store secrets in hidden fields/cookies
- Use cache-control directives to prevent sensitive data being cached
- Set session cookie to HTTPOnly
- Set the path attribute for cookies
- Set autocomplete=off
- Use HTTP redirection during login
- Invalidate sessions on logout
- Forcefully log out the user when suspicious events occur
- Log failures in the audit log
- Do not hard code the database password
- Use standard crypto algorithms and libraries
- Use SSL for transmission of all sensitive data
- Store passwords as salted hashes
- Use try...catch...finally to handle exceptions
- Define and use custom error pages