What Is The Need Of Web Application Security Testing

By Author: oswdsoa
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Proper Security testing of web applications is getting very important as more and more critical data is being stored in web applications and the number of web transactions is increasing.

Security testing is the process that determines that the data which is confidential is secured or not and the users can perform only those tasks that they are authorized to perform.

The major areas covered under Web Application Security Testing are:-

- Configuration areas
- Testing for known vulnerabilities
- Loopholes in server codes or scripts
- Advice on fixes and future security plans

In order to perform a useful security testing for web application, it is necessary that the security tester have a good knowledge of HTTP Protocol. He should have a good sound knowledge of how the client that is browser and the server communicates using HTTP. In addition to this, he should also know basics of SQL injection and XSS. The things to be checked while performing security testing are listed and discussed below:-

1] Password Cracking: The security testing on a web application can be useless by “Password ...
... Cracking”. In order to enter private areas of the application, anyone can easily guess the username and password or he/she can use the password cracking tool easily for the same purpose. List of common usernames and passwords are available along with open source password crackers. So it is very necessary for any web application to enforce to create a complex password as it doesn’t take very long to crack the username and password. Also if username or password is stored in cookies without its encryption, then the attacker can use different methods easily to steal cookies.

2] SQL Injection: The next important thing to be checked is SQL Injection. SQL injection attacks are very critical comparatively as the attacker gets vital information from server database. In order to check SQL injection entry points into your web application, it is important to find out the code from your code base where direct MySQL queries are executed on database by just accepting some user inputs. If user input data is crafted in SQL queries to query the database, attacker can inject SQL statements as user inputs to extract important information from the database very easily. Even if at least attacker is able to crash successfully the application, they can get the information which they are looking for.

3] Cross Site Scripting [XSS]: The tester should also check the web application for XSS. Any HTML or any script should not be accepted by the application and if it is so, then the application can be open to an attack by Cross Site Scripting. Attacker can easily use this method to execute malicious script or URL on victim’s browser. Using this, attacker can use scripts like JavaScript to steal user cookies and information which are stored in the cookies. Many web applications get some user information and pass this information in some variables from different pages.

There also some other important issues which are discovered in an application test like:-

- Command Injection
- Cookie Poisoning
- Insecure use of cryptography
- Buffer overflows
- Back doors and debug options
- Weak session management
- Forceful Browsing
- Well-known platform vulnerabilities

A final written report provides an analysis of any security problems discovered with the proposed solutions. So it is necessary to provide a final written report when the service of security testing is being provided.

Open source Web Development is a developing company which provides services of web development, web designing and open source developments with a team of highly qualified and experienced web developers.