Website Security Testing: Web Application Security Testing Guide

Due to the massive amount of information saved in web applications and a rise in the number of trades on the internet, proper Security Testing of Web Applications is becoming quite important day-by-day.

In this article, we will learn in detail about the key phrases used in Website Security Testing and it’s testing approach.

What is Website Security Testing?

Website Security Testing is the process which checks whether the confidential data stays confidential or not (i.e. it Isn’t subjected to individuals/ entities for which it is not intended for) and also the users can perform only those tasks that they’re licensed to execute

For Example, a user should not be able to deny the performance of the website to other users or a user should not be able to modify the performance of the web application in an unintended manner, etc..

Some Key Terms Used In Website Security Testing

Before we move further, It’ll Be Helpful to familiarize ourselves with few conditions that Are Often Utilised in web application Security Testing:

What’s Vulnerability?

Here is the weakness in the internet application. The cause of such” weakness” may be due to the bugs in the application, an injection (SQL/ script code) or the existence of viruses.

What is URL Manipulation?

Some internet applications communicate additional information between the client (browser) and the server at the URL. Changing some information in the URL can sometimes lead to unintended behavior by the server and also this termed as URL Manipulation.

What is SQL injection?

This is the procedure for inserting SQL statements through the internet application user interface right into some query that’s then executed by the server.

What’s Spoofing?

The creation of hoax look-alike sites or emails is called Spoofing.

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Website Security Testing Approach

To be able to execute a useful security test of an internet application, the security tester should have good knowledge about the HTTP protocol.

It is important to get an understanding of the way the client (browser) and the server communicate using HTTP.

Hopefully, the number of security flaws present in the web application won’t be high. However, being capable of describing all of the security defects correctly with all the required details will surely help.

Methods For Website Security Testing

The security testing on a Web Application can be kicked off by” Password Cracking”. In order to log into the private areas of the application, an individual can either suspect a username/ password or use a password cracker instrument for the same.

If the web application does not enforce an intricate password (For Example, with alphabets, number, and unique personalities or using at least a required number of characters), then it may not take long to decode the password and username.

If a username or password is stored in cookies without encrypting, an attacker may use unique procedures to steal the cookies and the information stored in the cookies like username and password.

For additional information see an article on” Site Cookie Testing”.

A tester should assess if the application passes important information in the query string or not. This occurs when the application uses the HTTP GET method to pass information between the client and the host.

The info is passed through the parameters from the query string. The tester can alter a parameter value in the query string to check whether the server accepts it.

Via HTTP GET request user info is passed to the server for authentication or fetching data. The attacker can control every input variable passed from the GET request to a server in order to get the essential information or to corrupt the information. In such conditions, any unusual behavior by program or web server would be the doorway for the attacker to get into an application.

The next component that should be assessed is SQL Injection. Entering a single quotation (‘) in almost any textbox should be rejected by this program. Instead, if the tester encounters a database error, it usually means the user input is added in some query which is then executed by an application. In this case, the application is vulnerable to SQL injection.

SQL injection attacks are extremely critical as an attacker may acquire vital data from the server database. To check SQL injection entrance points to your web application, discover the code out of your codebase where immediate MySQL queries are executed on the database by simply accepting any user inputs.

In case the user input data is crafted in SQL queries to query the database, an attacker can inject SQL statements or part of their SQL statements as user inputs to extract vital information from a database. Even when an attacker is successful to crash the program, from the SQL query error exhibited on a browser, the attacker can get the info that they are searching for.

Special personalities from user inputs should be handled/escaped properly in these scenarios.

A tester should also check the internet application for XSS (Cross-site scripting). Any HTML by Way of Example, or any script by Way of Instance,